Sunshine state reaches more than 60 pct renewables for first time – in winter

Queensland, aka the Sunshine State that has focused most of its renewables development till now on rooftop PV and large scale solar, has set a new record share of renewables of more than 60 per cent – in the middle of the winter.

Queensland has a 50 per cent renewable energy target for 2050, which doesn’t sound ambitious but now looks it because it remains the country’s most coal dependent state and over the past 12 months it averaged little more than 20 per cent renewables, the lowest in the country.

On Wednesday though, the combination of good winter sunshine, mild temperatures and strong output from its limited number of wind farms allowed it to set new renewable share records.

As noted by NEMLog, the total share of renewables reached a peak of 61.95 per cent at noon on Wednesday, a big jump from the previous record of 58.95 per cent set earlier this month.

That number included a small amount of hydro (0.6 per cent), so the really interesting number was posted 45 minutes later when the combined output of wind and solar set a new record share of local demand of 61.31 per cent, well ahead of the previous benchmark of 57.75 per cent set early last month.

The share is probably best illustrated in this graph above from OpenNEM, which also shows that prices were negative at the time, as the state’s customers got a rare reprieve from the pricing power of expensive coal and gas.

The state was also exporting more than 1GW south to NSW, while its pumped hydro at Wivenhoe were also busy taking advantage of the negative prices at the time.

The Queensland government is expected to release a detailed energy plan in the next few months outlining exactly how it will make the leap from 20 per cent renewables to 50 per cent in just eight years.

Although the wind share in the latest record was small – it set a new output record of 644MW and a record share of just 11 per cent at other times of the day – it will be boosted with the addition of the 1.02GW MacIntyre wind complex, and the Dulacca, Kaban and Clark Creek wind projects in coming years.

Most of the wind output on Wednesday came from the 453MW Cooper Gap wind farm, which was delivering more than 420MW at the time of the new records. There is only one other wind farm of note in the state, the 180MW Mt Emerald wind farm.