Australia's main power grid, known as the National Electricity Market, set a new milestone briefly this week when it broke through the 50 percent benchmark for renewable energy, Australian media reported
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 07th November, 2019) Australia's main power grid, known as the National Electricity Market, set a new milestone briefly this week when it broke through the 50 percent benchmark for renewable energy, Australian media reported.
According to the Renew Economy media outlet, the milestone was reached at 11:50 a.m. (08:50 GMT) on Wednesday, when the combined output of rooftop solar, large-scale wind and large-scale solar reached 50.2 percent of the power being produced in Australia's states serviced by the grid � Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia.
Rooftop solar provided 23.7 percent of all of the power demand, followed by wind at 15.7 percent, then large-scale solar with 8.8 percent and then hydro at 1.9 percent.
However, coal was still the largest provider of electricity on the grid with black coal-powered plants generating 35.7 percent of the power demand and brown coal-powered plant � 13.5 percent.
The renewables maintained the 50 percent mark for only about 10 minutes. Over the entire day, they contributed 31.2 percent of the electricity used over the five states serviced by the grid.
Australia has been investing heavily in renewables, becoming a world leader in the rate it has been installing wind and solar power generation systems per capita. In September, Australia's Renewable Energy Regulator said that it had approved enough wind and solar power stations to successfully meet its Large-scale Renewable Energy Target � to generate an additional 33,000 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2020 � ahead of schedule.
