Curtailment

Australian renewables developer South Energy has announced a series of “significant milestones” with a trio of large-scale solar PV and battery projects, with an aggregated capacity of more than 390 MW, getting the tick of approval from relevant authorities.

Western Australia will today introduce new curtailment rules which will allow for all new and upgraded solar PV and battery energy storage installations with an inverter capacity of 5 kW or less to be remotely turned down or switched off in emergency situations.

Many more renewable generators than originally thought are in a holding pattern as a result of oscillation problems in the weak-grid, high-resource area known as the West Murray. State Governments, AEMO and the renewables industry have hunkered down to find solutions that will also find application elsewhere in the grid as connection fever mounts.

Grid-scale wind and solar output reached new highs in Q4 last year pushing power prices to a three-year low despite a number of coal-fired generator outages. As Australia’s big PV fleet continues to expand, the National Electricity Market saw the highest output of big PV on record, but also record curtailment.

Recent analysis from Wood Mackenzie predicts green hydrogen, produced primarily by solar electrolysis, will reach cost parity in Australia, Germany and Japan by 2030.

The amount of large-scale solar capacity that commenced generation during the third quarter of 2018 was higher than the NEM’s entire large-scale solar capacity at the start of the year, reports the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO). In other news, Western Australia has pass the 1 GW solar milestone, while South Australia has seen record levels of curtailment.