Sunshine state shows its wind power promise after charting best month ever

Queensland has notched up its best month on record for wind energy generation, producing a new high output of 258GWh over the month of August, beating the previous record of 247GWh that was set in May.

Rystad Energy’s latest data on Australia’s best performing utility-scale wind and solar assets for August shows the Sunshine State’s new record was boosted by the 42MW wind component of the Kennedy Energy Park near Hughenden in central north Queensland.

The Kennedy Energy Park wind farm ranked second for the month, with a capacity factor of 43.7%, behind the top performer in Tasmania’s Cattle Hill wind farm at number one, and a 44.8% capacity factor.

Rystad’s senior renewables analyst David Dixon notes that while Queensland had a top month in wind, it still currently pales against other states, like Victoria, where a total of 952GWh came from wind in August, despite it being a sub-average month for wind there.

A quick look at Queensland’s wind development pipeline, however, shows this will soon change.

“Wind generation in Queensland is set to increase significantly over the coming years, due to 1.7GW of wind being under construction in the state, but yet to be energised,” Dixon notes.

On solar, the best performing grid-scale assets for August were all in Queensland, Dixon says, including Adani Group’s Rugby Run Stage 1 solar farm (31.3% CF), Genex Power’s Kidston solar farm (31.2% CF) and METKA EGN’s Moura solar farm (30.8% CF).

“At a state level Victoria was in top spot generating 1,059GWh with 107GWh from utility PV and 952GWh from wind.

“August wind generation was particularly low by historical standards, with wind generation falling year on year in every state except Queensland.”

All told, August 2023 ends with all Australian utility PV and wind assets generating a total of 3,654GWh, down from 3,880GWh (-6%) in August 2022, Dixon says.

See also: Queensland to hit 50 pct renewables two years early, but warns energy wars only just begun