Wind energy delivers one third of electricity of Australia’s main grid for first time

Wind energy – enjoying the impact of a major weather system that swept across Australia’s southern states this past week – established a new set of benchmarks in the both the main grid and Victoria.

The most notable is the record share of generation for wind energy – set at 33.45 per cent at 1.15am (AEST) on Friday morning, August 5, reaching one third of total output for the first time, and easily beating the previous record of 31.45 per cent.

This was not an output record, that was set at 7,304MW earlier in the week, but the greater share of production on Friday morning indicates the lower demand on the grid at the time.

Victoria – likely boosted by the recent ramping up of the country’s biggest wind farm, Stockyard Hill, and Murra Warra 2, also set new records – both for generation share (63.73 per cent, at 3am on Friday) and instant output (3252MW at 9.45pm on Wednesday night.

This graph below from GPE Nemlog2 shows how the peak in wind generation share has steadily increased over the past four years thanks to new capacity across the country. There is now more than 8GW of wind capacity operating in Australia’s main grid.