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Renewable Energy Comes to the Rescue During Australian Heatwaves

Solar Trust Centre Team : Mar 1, 2019 3:05:54 AM

General Australia

RenewEconomy reported yesterday that renewable sources of energy have performed extremely well during the last few record-breaking heatwaves in the country, according to The Australia Institute’s (TAI) National Energy Emissions Audit (January 2019).

Here are the key details about the audit and its findings:

Thursday 24th and Friday 25th of January 2019 were two of the hottest days on record in Australia, with some major cities reaching 46.8 degrees Celsius.
During these days, demand reached up to 33,950 MW, one of the highest ever recorded demand levels (the highest was in 2009 with a demand of 35,720 MW).
Victoria in particular suffered on these days, with three large coal generators down for the count.
The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) intervened by introducing some capacity of Reliability and Emergency Reserve Trader (RERT) generation and requesting load shedding.
It is reported that grid demanded would have been much higher without these interventions.
The audit also found renewables now account for 20% of total energy generation in the National Energy Market (NEM).

Emissions

The audit reports demand and grid generation increased in January 2019. Coal, gas and renewables all contributed to the grid. Emissions also increased as a result of this, but emission intensity continues to decrease.