Wind and solar grab world record 135 pct share of state demand, 108 pct over two days
Giles Parkinson 27 November 2021 19
Hornsdale wind farm in South Australia.
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.
Source: OPENNem. Please click to expand
It means that over the last 24 hours South Australia has become the first gigawatt scale grid in the world to be be nearly fossil free – with no coal generation (the last coal generator closed in 2016) and just a 4.4 per cent share from gas. (The thin orange line in graph above).
Market experts believe that share will decline even further as the market operator becomes comfortable over time with using battery storage – specifically, “grid forming inverters” – to provide the “system strength”, inertia and other crucial grid services once exclusively provided by coal, gas and hydro generators.
Source: NEMLog. Please click to expand.
According to Geoff Eldridge, from the data provider NEMLog, lots of records fell on Saturday. The record 135.5 per cent share of local demand for wind and solar occurred at 1050 AEST, (see graph above) while the two-day rolling share reached 108.1 per cent and there 72 hour rolling share 101 per cent (see graph below)..
Network demand in South Australia went negative again to minus 42.8MW. It was only a week ago that negative demand in the state was recorded for the first time.
In Victoria, the maximum share of wind and solar hit a new record of 79.6 per cent at 10.55 AEST, with network demand falling to a new record low of 2,200MW.
Source: NEMLog. Please click to expand.
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