Renewables-rich South Australia became a net electricity exporter for first time;
12 new wind and solar farms totalling 1050MW of capacity were added to the grid, including 500MW of large-scale solar, trebling the amount of large-scale solar in the system;
The continued rapid uptake of rooftop solar by homes and businesses kept a lid on grid demand, even if overall consumption showed a rise, and;
Electricity generation emissions in the national market fell again, but only slightly.
The most surprising of those developments may be the South Australia achievement, which shows that since the closure of the Hazelwood brown coal generator in Victoria in March 2017, South Australia has become a net exporter of electricity, in net annualised terms.Hugh Saddler, lead author of the study, notes that this is a big change for South Australia, which in 1999 and 2000, when it had only gas and local coal, used to import 30% of its electricity demand.
The fact that wholesale prices in South Australia were higher in other states then, as they are now has nothing to with wind and solar, but the fact that it has no low-cost conventional source and a peaky demand profile (then and now).
The difference today is that the state is now taking advantage of its abundant resources of wind and solar radiation, and the new technologies which have made them the lowest cost sources of new generation, to supply much of its electricity requirements, Saddler writes.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jun/05/south-australia-rides-ren...