- Renewable Energy generation contributed two-third of power to Australia’s main grid.
- One challenge of the energy transition was managing fluctuating contributions from renewable sources.
On Friday, renewable energy generation contributed two-thirds of power to Australia’s main grid. At 12.30 pm, the milestone was set to a contribution of 68.7% or 18,882MW from renewable sources. Renewable penetration rates measured in 30-minute intervals illustrate contributions to the grid within a short period. In July, the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) report showed that Australia was now among the world leaders in cheap solar energy. The average cost of electricity from utility-scale solar has dropped by 90% in Australia since 2010. This represents a 21% year-on-year drop in price.
Alison Reeve, climate change and energy deputy program director at the Grattan Institute, said, “Five years ago, the maximum that we’d managed to get to was 30%, and five years before that, I don’t know that anyone was even measuring [renewables], it was so small. One challenge of the energy transition was managing fluctuating contributions from renewable sources”.
She added that gas and hydro generators are more responsive at short timescales. Still, the high price of gas currently sets high electricity prices in the market during its use and coal-fired power plants are out of the market because they can’t ramp up and down that quickly. Also, Hydro generators have been limited in their operation because of the wet weather on the east coast of Australia to limit flooding, and Reeve noted that the challenge of replacing the “system’s stability” that coal and gas provide to the electricity grid would require more long-duration storage infrastructure such as batteries. She said, “Until we figure out a way to get that balancing role done by other things like pumped hydro and batteries, and we have enough of those in the system, there will be a natural upper limit on how much renewables penetration we have, particularly once you move beyond the instantaneous and start to talk about what we can sustain over four or eight hours”.