South Australia's great success in changing toward renewable energy

South Australia shows the rest of the world what is possible

South Australia's generation record (downloaded 2022/12/19)
Image credit: Open Nem

Records broken in late 2022 As shown below in 'Snapshots' South Australia first achieved more than 100% of demand being filled by renewable generation in late 2022. Also shown there, in the year to 2022/12/18 two thirds of the state's electricity demand was filled by renewable energy. Britain goes a week without coal power, May 2019 Britain did very well with over a week without using coal to generate power and 37% renewables; but South Australia has done far better. As of late 2020 SA has had 4 and a half; years without using coal and 58% renewables in the last year. Britain had 44% fossil fuels in the quarter up to March 2019, SA had 42% in the last year. SA has no nuclear, Britain had 17% in the quarter up to March 2019. Perhaps the biggest difference between Britain and SA is that in the former they are wondering how they can increase their renewables while South Australia has enormous potential for wind, solar and energy storage expansion – all we need is a progressive federal government. (SA has imported some coal-fired electricity from the eastern states, but over the last couple of years it is exporting more renewably generated electricity than the amount of imported fossil fuel energy.) The graph above, downloaded 2022/12/19, shows a record of South Australia's huge success in: Going from near zero renewable energy to two thirds in just 15 years; Adopting wind power (shown green on the graph); Adopting solar power (shown yellow on the graph); Finishing with coal power (shown brown on the graph); And from 2017, increasingly exporting excess renewable power to the eastern states. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this achievement is that there was little encouragement from state or federal governments; several federal governments in power while this happened were actively antipathetic toward renewable energy and strongly pro-coal, and the state governments did little to encourage the transition to renewables, but did not discourage it. I would like to express my personal thanks to the people who were responsible for the Open Nem website as well as all those who have helped South Australia achieve its huge success against the best efforts of the federal Liberal/National coalition to stop it all happening. Home Top Index I have written elsewhere on these pages an argument for the thesis that a person in a position of power who knowingly lies in opposing action on climate change has taken part in the greatest crime in the history of Mankind. PMs Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison are all guilty of this crime. The need and South Australia's achievement   A winery in the Clare Valley Wineries have been early adopters of solar PV Photo taken by my drone 2016/01/17   Snowtown Wind Farm The most productive wind farm in Australia in 2017 Photo taken by my drone 2016/10/19 South Australia went from near zero renewable energy to about 67% between 2003 and 2022. This is a remarkable achievement and it was done with very few problems along the way. At least in the period from 2003 to 2017 South Australia has done far more toward reducing its greenhouse emissions than any other Australian state. The need for serious action on climate change was at the time of writing being demonstrated by Hurricane Harvey devastating big areas of Texas, record monsoonal flooding in India, Nepal and Bangladesh, record wildfires in Canada and western USA and Hurricane Irma producing unprecedented damage in the Caribbean and Florida. In addition to climate change there are the related problems of ocean acidification, sea level rise and the air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels that kills millions of people world wide each year. In 2017 all well informed, open minded people of at least moderate intelligent accept the reality of anthropogenic climate change, and with record storms, floods and wildfires and almost every year being warmer than the previous one the urgency of action in reducing greenhouse emissions is equally obvious. If other Australian states and other nations were to adopt renewables as enthusiastically as South Australians have done, and continue to do, future generations – our children and our grandchildren – would be able to look forward to a brighter future than they seem to be condemned to at present. It would be well worth paying higher prices for clean energy, but the fact is that renewable energy is in 2020 cheaper than fossil fuel-fired energy. And the cost of renewable energy is continuing to fall. Home Top Index SA leading the nation and the world Snapshots of SA's electricity generation South Australia generates more than 100% of its electricity demand renewably over a whole week

A week's electricity generation in SA, December 2022

The graph above records that 104.5% of South Australia's power demand was filled by renewable energy in the week 11th to 18th December 2022 (excess energy was exported to Victoria). For the last day in that period the figure was 114%. In the year to 2022/12/18 two thirds of SA's demand was generated renewably; 45.8% wind and 21.8% solar. The solar power was made up of two parts: 16.9% of the state's demand was filled by roof-top solar, 4.9% utility solar. Note the low proportion of gas power in the system. A few years earlier AEMO required a larger proportion of gas fired power for system stability. By 2022, following the installation of synchronous condensers, it has been found that a proportion of gas as low as 4% is workable.

A high level of renewable generation and low levels of emissions   Renewables share Graph from Ozlabs; data sourced from AREMI and APVI   Emissions intensity Graph from Ozlabs; data sourced from AREMI and APVI I first became aware of the availability of graphs such as those on the right 2017/09/19, only ten days after starting this page, through a Renew Economy posting. I downloaded the two graphs from Ozlabs on the same day. They provide yet more evidence that South Australia's adoption of renewable energy has been a huge success. The first graph, renewables share, shows that SA, which had practically no renewable energy 14 years earlier, had a very substantial proportion in September 2017. The second graph, emissions intensity, shows that South Australia, through its adoption of renewable energy, had power-sector emissions at a lower level than any other mainland state. South Australia has moved far more in reducing its emissions, in a world in which reducing emissions is becoming almost daily more obviously needed, than any other Australian state. Other states, and Australia as a whole, should be using SA as an outstanding example of what could be done and what should be done in this world that is increasingly being damaged by climate change. The graphs have been made available, and self-funded, by Ben Elliston. Thank you Ben. Home Top Index Tasmania had by far the lowest emissions of any state due to its high level of hydro-power, which had been in place for twenty or more years. Victoria had the highest emissions because it relied on particularly polluting brown coal, while NSW and Queensland burned black coal. The fact that Queensland had virtually no wind power but a moderate amount of solar power was obvious in the daily peak in renewables share and the daily trough in emissions.   This section added 2023/09/15 SA 70% renewables powered in 2023 SA was still well and truly leading the way in new renewables in late 2023 Open NEM showed that in the year to September 2023 just over 70% of SA's power demand was generated renewably: 45.5% wind, 19.1% roof-top solar and 5.6% utility solar. This was a higher percentage of roof-top solar than any other state (WA had 16.3%) and twice the percentage of wind power than any other state (Victoria had 22.7% wind generation). It was a far higher percentage of renewable energy than any other state except Tasmania (which has abundant hydro power), Victoria had 41% renewable power.   This section added 2021/06/17 Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) recognition of SA IEEFA produced a report titled "A Grid Dominated by Wind and Solar Is Possible - South Australia: A Window Into the Future" in June 2021. The report was written by Johanna Bowyer, Lead Research Analyst for Australian Electricity and Gabrielle Kuiper, DER [Distributed Energy Resources] Specialist and Guest Contributor The Executive Summary of the report started with: "South Australia (SA) is a window into the future of an electricity grid dominated by wind and solar, and backed up by storage. Lessons from South Australia can help inform other jurisdictions on how to integrate large amounts of variable renewable energy (VRE) generation and distributed energy resources (DER) into the electricity system. This report presents seven key lessons from the South Australian experience for other states and nations that are transitioning from a fossil fuel-based grid to a low emissions, high renewables penetration grid." and contained sections under the following headings: 60% of Annual Demand Has Been Provided by Wind and Solar and 100% In Certain Time Periods Government Policy and Market Features Can Drive High Adoption of Renewables Ambitious Renewables Plans (500%) Can Drive Economic Growth Wind and Solar Bring Down Wholesale Electricity Prices System Reliability and Security Can Be Maintained in a High Renewables Grid Batteries Can Help Maintain System Reliability and Security High Penetrations of Rooftop Solar Can Be Managed With Distribution Network Innovation The World Economic Forum produced a Web page titled '7 renewable energy lessons from South Australia' on 2021/06/14 based on the IEEFA report. The author was Sean Fleming and the page was dated 2021/06/14. Home Top Index The lies of the detractors   Power transmission line downed due to the storms of September 2016 The photo was taken about ten kilometres south of Blyth, Mid-North South Australia on 2016/10/06. The lying opponents of renewable energy (among the vocal opponents there seems to be no other kind) have blamed all sorts of problems on South Australia's renewable energy. I hold that, considering the urgency of acting on climate change, to knowingly lie in support of fossil fuels and dishonestly slander renewable energy is a crime against humanity. SA blackout in September 2016 There was a state-wide blackout in SA in September 2016. It was caused by exceptional storm-force winds, and had nothing at all to do with the intermittency of wind and solar power. Three of the state's four major power transmission lines to the north of Adelaide were downed by the winds. The section flattened shown in the photo on the right was within a few kilometres of my place at Armagh. It is true that some settings on some wind farms were a contributing factor to the blackout, but certainly not the cause. Yet the opponents of renewable energy blamed the blackout on renewable energy.   Major storm damaged power lines in 2022 On 2022/11/12 there were severe storms through the settled areas of South Australia; the main transmission line connecting SA with Victoria, the Heywood Interconnector was put out of action due to a fallen power pylon, and there were 210 power outages leading to power being cut to 160,000 customers due largely to trees falling across power lines. There were further storm-caused blackouts in December 2016. This time the major transmission lines were not damaged, but over 300 power distribution lines were damaged, largely by falling trees. I am over seventy years old and don't recall ever seeing so many trees knocked down by one storm. In twenty years no Callitris tree on my property had been blown down by storm winds; in this storm alone four were flattened in three different areas. Again, renewable energy opponents blamed the blackouts on South Australia's wind and solar power. The truth is that while there are certainly challenges in adopting high percentages of renewable energy, South Australia has had no serious problems that could be ascribed to the intermittency of wind or solar power and, with the exception of blackouts that were caused by storms, has had a very smooth transition from near zero to 50% renewables (to 67% by 2022). Of course climate change has been shown by scientists to make storms more violent than they would otherwise be, so if anyone should be blamed for SA's power blackouts it should be those who oppose taking serious action to reduce climate change. In August 2017 Prime Minister Turnbull accused the South Australian government of "ideology and idiocy" for their support for renewable energy. Since the state government's support for renewable energy is no more than any reasonable person would believe is justified and the state's adoption of renewable energy has been a great success, I accuse PM Turnbull of ideology, idiocy and criminal behaviour in his support of coal and opposition to renewable energy to the detriment of the planet and all future generations. Home Top Index Outage of the Heywood interconnector On 2020/01/31 the Heywood interconnector, the main transmission line connecting South Australia to the remainder of the NEM (National Electricity Market) failed due to storm damage on several transmission lines in Victoria. This caused SA and a part of western Victoria to be 'islanded', that is, it had to be run as a grid independently of the larger part of the NEM. The AEMO report stated that: "Due to the nature of the damage to transmission equipment in Victoria, the extended South Australia island was not reconnected to the rest of the NEM until 17 February 2020." In the context of this page it is notable that the 'islanded' area ran quite successfully without any support from coal-fired or other base-load power stations for the 17 day period. (Federal Liberal) Treasurer Scott Morrison shown to be ignorant or willing to lie or both   The Hornsdale Tesla big battery Photo taken by my drone 2018/01/14 When the Tesla Big Battery (more correctly The Hornsdale Power Reserve) was proposed in mid 2017 PM Turnbull's Treasurer Scott Morrison was reported in The Daily Telegraph as having said that Mr Musk’s bid to build the world’s largest lithium ion battery wouldn’t solve any energy problems because its capacity is so small. He said: “By all means, have the world’s biggest battery, have the world’s biggest banana, have the world’s biggest prawn like we have on the roadside around the country, but that is not solving the problem,” Morrison said Tesla boss Mr Musk was clearly very good at promotion. “I think he saw [South Australian Labor Premier] Jay Weatherill coming.” Time has shown the Hornsdale Power Reserve, like South Australia's wind power developments, to be a great success. For a Federal Treasurer to be so greatly in error, or willingly dishonest, in an important financial matter is quite shocking. Scott Morrison later became Prime Minister and lead what was quite probably the worst government in Australia's recent history. Home Top Index   This section added 2019/09/08 Power prices have risen less in South Australia, with its adoption of renewable energy, than the average for the eastern states The detractors of South Australia's renewable energy miracle often make misleading claims about power prices. South Australia does have high power prices, but they were high both before and after the adoption of renewable energy and they are high because SA had and has a higher percentage of expensive gas-fired generation than the other states. According to the Australian Energy Regulator the annual volume weighted average spot prices on the wholesale electricity market in SA have risen more in the period during which the state developed its renewable energy than in Queensland, but less than NSW and much less than Victoria. Average wholesale spot prices from the Australian Energy Regulator and percentage rise in average spot prices in the period during which SA developed most of its renewable energy. Prices in dollars per megawatt-hour.   Period Qld NSW Vic SA 5 year average before renewables July 1998 to June 2003 $46.6 $34.2 $33.4 $51.4 5 year average following development of substantial renewables July 2014 to June 2019 $77.2 $71.0 $75.0 $93.8 Percentage rise   66% 108% 125% 82% The power price rise in SA during the period of renewable energy introduction was less than the average of that in the eastern states; 82% against 100% It can be calculated from the table that while South Australia's power prices were 35% higher than the average for the other states before the adoption of renewables they were only 26% higher in the last five years, following the adoption of substantial renewable energy. It is also notable that in the year to the time of writing this section (September 2019) SA has exported nearly twice as much power to Victoria than it has imported, suggesting that wholesale prices in SA have become generally lower than those in Victoria. In addition, the ratio of exports to Victoria to imports from Victoria has been steadily increasing since late 2016. See OpenNem. Home Top Index   This section added 2019/12/08 Working together: wind and solar complementing each other   South Australia's power generation over one day South Australia's power generation sources over a 24 hour period, 2019/12/07-08 Image credit Open NEM The graph on the right shows how wind power and solar power can, and do, complement each other. When the sun is not shining (more accurately, when the light is not bright, solar power is also generated under cloudy conditions) the wind may be blowing and wind power abundant; as in the right-hand side of the image on the right. When the wind isn't blowing there may be abundant solar energy, as in the left-hand side of the image. In South Australia at least it has been noted that winds tend to be stronger at night than in the day. In this particular 24-hour period 30% of the state's power was generated by solar PV and 39% by wind power; 69% total renewables. Batteries provided 0.6% of the state's demand; expect to see far more energy storage in the future. Home Top Index   This section added 2019/01/16 Causes of power failures An article in The Conversation, 2019/01/16 by Guy Dundas and Lucy Percival carried the headline "35 degree days make blackouts more likely, but new power stations won’t help". After studying nine years of power outage data the authors found that while outages were more frequent during hot weather the causes were far more often in the power distribution system than due to a short-fall in generation (contrary to statements from supporters of coal power). Quoting from the Conversation article: "There have been generation shortfalls in Australia on only three days in the past fourteen years, whereas there are network failures every summer all around the country, every year."   This section added 2018/02/23 Pumped hydro developments USA Department of Energy graph This shows clearly that the vast majority of the world's energy storage in 2016 was in the form of pumped hydro. Much of it was built to allow power grids dominated by inflexible nuclear power to respond to variations in demand.   No action on pumped hydro in SA, December 2021 For reasons that this writer does not know there seems to have been little, if any, action on pumped hydro energy storage development in SA over the last couple of years. In contrast, there is an increasing amount of action on batteries; see Batteries; how many grid scale batteries are there in SA?. This is curious because while batteries are good for very quick response, they are of little value in providing power over periods of a number of hours. Energy storage for periods of up to a day or two is needed if SA is to reach 100% renewable energy and batteries are not up to this in late 2021. There has been a huge amount of talk (and quite a bit of action) on batteries as a means of storing electricity in Australia, but as the graph above shows the vast majority of the world's energy storage is in pumped-hydro. Pumped hydro is simply a cheaper way of storing large amounts of energy than batteries. I won't explain what pumped hydro is here, I have done that elsewhere on this site. If Australia is to replace substantial proportions of its fossil-fuelled power stations with renewables we must greatly increase our amount of energy storage; pumped hydro will have to provide a large part of this. There is little pumped hydro energy storage in Australia, only three operating installations so far as I know. PM Turnbull has proposed a huge pumped hydro scheme in the Snowy Mountains, but that will at least take years if it ever comes to anything. South Australia is looking like taking the lead here too, with the government announcing investments in four projects in February 2018. For more information see Energy Source and Distribution News, 2018/02/09. Home Top Index Hydrogen South Australia could soon be in the forefront of a technology that has the potential to replace liquid fossil fuels   Major hydrogen proposal for Port Pirie, December 2021 In an article posted on ABC North and West by Gillian Aeria on 2021/12/09 it was reported that: "A $750 million hydrogen facility is planned for Port Pirie after a deal was struck between the Marshall government and Trafigura, a commodities trading company that also owns Nyrstar. The electrolyser would use the state's wind and solar energy to split water, either from a desalination plant or from the smelter's treated wastewater, into oxygen and hydrogen. The oxygen will supply Nyrstar's smelting operations, while the hydrogen will be sold by Trafigura to domestic transport and heavy industries or converted into ammonia for international export." Nyrstar runs a smelter that is by far the biggest employer in Port Pirie. The report stated that the first stage alone (an 85MW electrolyser) would be the biggest in the world. The second stage would be five times as big again.   Hydrogen is the most common element in the Universe. Most of the hydrogen on the Earth has combined with oxygen to form water.   Hydrogen could be used to produce Adblue, a Diesel additive Adblue is a fuel additive that is needed for modern Diesel vehicles. In late 2021 it was in worryingly short supply. I've written more on the production of Adblue from hydrogen elsewhere on these pages. The world must dump its fossil fuel addiction, but liquid fossil fuels (petrol, kerosine, diesel) are very convenient ways of storing energy to power motor vehicles, including ships, planes, trains, cars and trucks. What is there that can replace fossil fuels for powering our machines? At the time of writing, in early 2018, an obvious contender was electricity stored in batteries. The limitation here is the cost of batteries; at present an electric car in Australia comes with a price about twice that of a similar sized ICE- (internal combustion engine) powered car. Also, batteries are not suitable as a means of transporting large amounts of energy from one place to another. An alternative to batteries for energy storage and transportation is hydrogen, which weight-for-weight stores more energy than traditional liquid fuels. To the present there have been several major technical problems with hydrogen: Hydrogen has proven difficult to produce in a way that is cheap, efficient and environmentally friendly; The hydrogen molecule is very small so the gas is more likely to be lost to leakage than are other gasses; Hydrogen can form metal hydrides, which are brittle, with the metals of pipes and tanks; Hydrogen is difficult to store and transport because it is a very light-weight gas that cannot be liquified except at extremely low temperatures. However, solutions for these problems seem to be getting close: The electrolytic dissociation of water into it two components, oxygen and hydrogen, seems to becoming sufficiently cheap to be economically viable; Hydrogen can be cheaply and efficiently stored and transported in the form of ammonia (a compound of hydrogen and nitrogen). Ammonia is a gas that can be easily liquified for convenient storage or transport and it can easily be converted back into hydrogen and nitrogen, as required. Ammonia also has many industrial uses. The ABC's Nick Harmsen wrote about a Hydrogen-fuelled power plant planned for Port Lincoln in South Australia on 2018/02/11. Meanwhile, the CSIRO have developed a method for collecting the hydrogen following the dissociation of ammonia. See Renewable hydrogen could fuel Australia's next export boom after CSIRO breakthrough ABC, Rebecca Turner, 2017/05/12. A second renewables-to-gas hydrogen plant was announced in February 2018, this one in Tonsley, an Adelaide suburb; see the article by Sophie Vorrath in Renewable Energy. Home Top Index South Australians love renewables The Australia Institute conducted a poll of a sample of 624 South Australians and released the results in March 2019. The poll asked: Would you support or oppose a Renewable Energy Target of 100% by 2030? The overall result was 69% support, 14% opposed and 17% undecided. There was strong support for the renewables target even among Liberal/National party voters: 60% support, 25% opposed, 15% undecided. Support from other parties was significantly higher at 77-79%, with the unsurprising exception of Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party. (Interestingly, another poll indicated that voters could be ranked from most to least altruistic in the order: Greens, Labor, Liberal/National Coalition, One Nation.) This poll emphasises the basic premise of this page: South Australia's transition toward renewable energy has been a great success. Home Top Index Where next?   Our energy future Since writing this section I have written pages on South Australia's energy future, 2018/08/08, and Australia's energy future, 2018/08/20. Following the power outages of late 2016 the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) became understandably cautious; they ruled that a minimum amount of gas generation should be on-line at all times. Since that time it seems that the maximum amount of renewable energy in the South Australian generation mix has been about 80%, the remainder being gas. (Update, December 2022. With the installation of synchronous condensers into the SA system the proportion of gas in the system has been allowed to be as low as 4% with no problems.) The graph below, recorded on 2016/08/20, a month or so before the power outages, shows 90% renewable energy in SA's generation. I don't think that this was very uncommon, in fact, renewable generation in SA occasionally reached 120% of consumption, as recorded in the Electranet document mentioned below under synchronous condensers. (The excess generation would have been exported to the eastern states.) After this time when wind power generated more power than was needed to get to the 80% some of the wind farms had to be 'curtailed'; that is, had to reduce the amount of power they put into the grid. This, of course, reduced the economic viability of the wind farms as well as meaning that more fossil fuels were being burned than necessary. Introduction of synchronous condensers In May 2018 Electranet, the owner/operator of eastern Australia's transmission lines, proposed installing synchronous condensers in three places in South Australia. Quoting from Electranet's page: "A secure power system needs adequate levels of both system strength and inertia, which to date have been provided by synchronous power generation. System strength relates to the ability of a power system to manage fluctuations in supply or demand while maintaining stable voltage levels. Inertia relates to the ability of a power system to manage fluctuations in supply or demand while maintaining stable system frequency. Both are important to ensure secure supply for customers. If there is not enough of these services within the power system, there is an increased risk of system instability and supply interruptions." Electranet's page defines synchronous condensers as: "A synchronous condenser operates in a similar way to large electric motors and generators. It contains a synchronous motor whose shaft is not directly connected to anything, but spins freely and is able to adjust technical conditions on the power system. Synchronous condensers are an important source of system strength and other services such as inertia." So the synchronous condensers should be able to provide at least some of the system strength and inertia currently provided by gas-fired generators. With the synchronous condensers in place we might hope that renewable energy will be able again to produce substantially more than 80% of the state's electricity when there is sufficient wind. In November 2021, because of the stability provided to the grid by synchronous condensers and other actions, the minimum amount of gas-fired generation in the South Australian grid was reduced to about 6%. Home Top Index   This section added 2021/11/26 November 2021, another step toward 100% renewable electricity   SA generation 2021/11/26 Electricity generation in South Australia in the 24 hours up to 4pm NEM time; only 6% gas-fired generation! Image credit OpenNem.   How many grid-scale batteries are there in SA? At the time of writing there was certainly the the Tesla Big Battery (AKA the Hornsdale Power Reserve near Jamestown, 150MW/194MWh) and the one at Dalrymple (30MW/8MWh) on Yorke Peninsula. On 2021/03/24 Energy Minister Dan van Holst Pellekaan announced plans by AGL to build a 250MW battery on Torrens Island. In the announcement he said "This will be the fifth grid-scale battery in our state". It seems that there is one near Lake Bonney in the Southeast (25MW/52MWh) and one at the Adelaide Desalination installation (6.3MW). Another is proposed at Tailem Bend (1.6MW/1.1MWh), current status unknown. I attended an information session in the Blyth Town Hall about a proposal by Neoen to build a battery of up to 300MW/800MWh at Blyth on 2021/12/09. (See Blyth Battery.) A friend has told me that two other sites for proposed batteries are Templers (proposed by RES) and Gould Creek (proposed by Maoneng). Renew Economy has a big battery storage map of Australia.   Another record In an article in RenewEconomy, 2021/11/27, written by Giles Parkinson, headlined "Wind and solar grab world record 135 pct share of state demand, 108 pct over two days" it was reported that: "Wind and solar continue to smash records in South Australia, surging to a new high of a 135 per cent share of state demand on Saturday, and averaging more than 108 per cent of local demand over the last 48 hours. The new benchmarks were facilitated by good solar and wind conditions, but also by the decision by the Australian Energy Market Operator to dramatically dial down the amount of gas generation required to ensure the grid remains secure. As RenewEconomy reported exclusively on Friday, South Australia until recently had required at least 240MW of gas generation to ensure enough “synchronous generation”. That meant that wind or solar had to be curtailed to make room for that capacity. But following the commissioning of four spinning machines known as synchronous condensers, (which do not burn fuel), AEMO has dialled back the amount of gas generation needed, first to 120MW and more recently to just 80MW." I happened to look at the OpenNem graph for South Australia's power generation on 2021/11/26. The screen shot I recorded is shown on the right (click on it to see the high definition image). The graph showed that 108% of South Australia’s demand was generated by renewables in the previous 24 hours - that was not out of the ordinary for the recent past. What was different was that there was only 6% gas in the mix! AEMO (the Australian Energy Market Operator) had previously required a higher percentage of gas-fired electricity in the mix - for stability. The graph suggested that AEMO had accepted that the four Synchronous condensers and several batteries that had been installed provided a level of stability such that the amount of gas-fired power in the mix could safely be substantially reduced. I had happened to record OpenNEM graphs on a few previous days of the same month. They showed that the proportion of gas was 20% back on 11th, 15% on the 18th and 11% on the 21st. Now it was down to 6%! It seemed that AEMO had gradually reduced the proportion of gas-fired electricity in the mix over the previous few weeks. It seems to being held at about 82MW at the present. Another point needs to be made here. For the quantities of renewable electricity generation in the SA power grid to be what they are strongly suggests that more could be generated if there was a market for it. This makes the proposed SA-NSW interconnector and a hydrogen industry more needed than ever before, especially if the SA renewable energy base is to expand to its full potential. Home Top Index Another record? Just before the end of the year   SA generation 2021/12/28 Electricity generation in South Australia in the three days up to 10:30am NEM time. Image credit OpenNem. Nearly 117% of South Australia's electricity demand was supplied by renewable energy over a whole three days, the excess beyond local demand being exported to the eastern states. I just happened to look at OpenNEM at the time, so if I had the knowhow to pick and choose the exact time I downloaded the figures I would probably be able to find even more impressive figures. The graphic shows 80.2% wind power, 32.4% solar rooftop, and 4.0% utility solar. Utility solar can supply around 8% of SA's power so it appears that in this period it was being significantly curtailed (that means that there could have been more renewable energy if it could have been used or exported). Fossil fuels accounted for only 6.1% of SA's consumption. That was gas, SA has no coal-fired power generation.

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