The Market Operator Says Renewable Energy Cuts In Australia Will Rise By 40% By 2022

Daniel Westerman, chief executive of the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), said renewable energy cuts in Australia were up about 40 percent from last year.

Australia finds itself caught between needing more renewable power generation and limiting the number of renewable projects in large areas of the national grid. To complicate matters further, some camps believe a new transmission system is the only way out of the situation, but Australia's framework for assessing transmission projects is not considered fit for purpose.

AEMO chief Executive Daniel Westerman told a forum in Sydney on May 15 that cuts in renewable energy projects had risen by almost 40% over the past year. The states most affected are Victoria and New South Wales, and the woes extend to parts of Queensland.

"We can see from the control room that more and more solar and wind power is being cut because there is not enough transmission capacity," Westerman said.

From January to March, connections from Victoria to New Zealand and Tasmania were at their limits 42 per cent and 57 per cent of the time respectively. "The line to NSW was bound for two-thirds of the time that the sun was producing free electrons, and over 80% of the time to Tasmania," he said. In other words, part of our electric highway is paralyzed."

Ian Learmonth, chief executive of the Australian Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), said Australia was well below the level needed to meet its climate targets - namely a 43% cut in emissions by 2030 and more than 80% of electricity generated from renewables on the national grid.

"To meet the ambitious targets around renewables and emissions reductions, we need to install about 29GW of large-scale renewable energy, which is roughly 3.6GW per year or 300MW per month, equivalent to a sizeable wind farm per month," Learmonth said.