Australian Chart of the week | Got your money; wind shaking up the merchant revenue order?

Ideal weather conditions for wind and solar across the NEM in recent weeks saw renewables hit new highs in the National Electricity Market (NEM). A recent update from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) indicated that around noon on the 20th of August, wind and solar contributed 11.7GW – 46.5% – of total energy for that settlement period. This new record surpassed the previous record of 11.3GW from November 2019 by 400MW.

With wind and solar increasingly displacing dispatchable generation assets, what impact is this having on merchant revenues for different generation types in the NEM? In this chart of the week, we investigate the impact the energy transition is having on merchant revenues by generation type in New South Wales (NSW).  To fully appreciate the rate at which the transition is occurring in the merchant market, we analyse the change by fuel type.

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