Renewable energy supplied half of the country’s electricity on Easter Saturday
Last Saturday, as the country prepared to devour their weight in chocolate eggs, Australia’s energy grid was getting a serious workout.
Data from the National Energy Market (NEM) revealed that renewable energy accounted for 50.7% of the power supply in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia.
What’s even more impressive is that rooftop solar in particular provided 22% of the power demand, followed by wind (17.1%), large-scale solar (9.4%) and hydro (2.2%).
This isn't the first time it’s happened, according to Dylan McConnell, a researcher at University of Melbourne's Climate and Energy College.
"The fact that it's happened once in November and now again would appear to show a higher proportion of renewables is a trend. Easter weekend is also historically a low demand period,” he told Radio Program, Hack.
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But renewable energy isn’t just taking care of business during the Easter long weekend.
According to figures from the latest Clean Energy Australia Report, renewable energy supplied 24% of the nation’s electricity needs in 2019.
The data also found that 2.2 million homes had solar panels installed in Australia by the end of December 2019, with every state and territory recording an increase in installations between 2017/18 and 2018/19.
"Over the next decade we're going to see more and more coal fired power stations close and ultimately we need more and more renewables to replace them,” said, chief executive of the Renewable Energy Industry's Clean Energy Council, Kane Thornton.
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Of course, solar panels aren’t for everyone. Whether your home is suitable or not for solar panels will depend on the location of your home, the size of your roof and the amount of sunlight your roof gets.
So if you’ve been tossing up whether solar energy is right for your household, why not have a read of our renewable energy FAQs guide. Or enter your postcode below to find out which retailers offer green plans in your area.
