In the spirit of the Australian Olympic team, instantaneous wind generation in the National Energy Market (NEM) reached new heights during a blustery end to July. Output hit a record 6,427MW at 8:05 pm on 25 July, after breaking 6,000MW for the first time just the day before. In this ‘Chart of the week’, we look at NEM and wind generation output records since January 2019 in the various states.
As wind capacity in the NEM increases, it follows that the windy seasons will bring new output records. After breaking 4,000MW in February 2019, the NEM record has increased by 61% to 6,427MW. 2021 so far has seen the largest calendar-year increase of 23% (1,185MW), compared to 9% (425MW) in 2020 and 21% (830MW) in 2019