Western Australia’s renewable energy sources, including wind and solar, have surpassed the primary fossil fuel sources of coal and gas generation for the first time in October.
Data from the OpenNem online facility shows that wind and solar accounted for around 550GWh of output into Western Australia’s South West Interconnected System (SWIS) – the state’s primary electricity grid – in October. That figure exceeded the coal output for the first time (452GWh), while biomass beat gas for the first time (553MWh).
It’s a significant landmark for the W.A. grid and comes after the recent opening of three large-scale projects, including:
- The 100MW Merredin solar farm (Australia’s largest)
- The 214MW Yandin wind farm (the largest in the state)
- The 180MW Warradarge wind farm (the third largest in the state)
Meanwhile, rooftop solar panels provided almost 50% of the state’s renewable energy output and are expected to increase its share. There will be fewer openings for large-scale wind and solar until 2023; when the next wave of coal-fired power station closure will happen.
Simon Holmes à Court, an analyst from the Climate & Energy Hub, said.
We are really proud to have extended OpenNEM’s reach to include Western Australia’s SWIS network. The golden state is too often excluded from Australian energy discussions, yet the SWIS is important, delivering 40% more energy than South Australia’s grid. We hope that with greater the visibility OpenNEM is now providing, more people will become familiar with W.A.’s fascinating energy transition.
OpenNem previously focused exclusively on the National Electricity Market in the eastern states, until now. The SWIS database is the latest addition to the online facility. OpenNem has also licensed historical and real-time rooftop solar modeling from the Australian Photovoltaic Institute.
