(Written 19 January 2022)
I had been hearing statements like “South Australia runs entirely on renewable power.” This was contrary to many articles I had read that suggested that running on only renewables was very difficult if not impossible unless the mixture of sources included sufficient hydro power.
Today I learnt about the likely source of these statements. On the Facebook page of Australian Greens for Nuclear Energy – unofficial, the idea was fact checked. It seems Senator Sarah Hanson-Young authorised the following statement made yesterday under the banner “SA BREAKS ENERGY RECORD – RUNNING FOR A WEEK ON RENEWABLES”
“GOOD NEWS! South Australia sourced over 100 per cent of the electricity it needed from renewable power for a week leading up to December 29 – a new record. Now is the time to get rid of coal, gas and the Morrison Government ”
I checked the reference to the energy information. A snapshot is shown below. It is hard to see the zero line but it is clear that SA produced sufficient renewable electricity for its needs for the 3 days before 29 December 2021, on average, on a daily basis. These days were all days of lower electricity consumption and of higher wind power production. Renewables also produced very close to 100% of consumption on Christmas day and yesterday. This is a wonderful result, but SA needed some form of gas generated power for most of the month. It was dependent on dirty imported power almost every day. To claim a week on renewables by averaging excess exported green power on the three days with the 4 days before is game playing and hides the critical issues relating to balancing green energy production with electricity consumption on a minute-to-minute basis.
My Blog has become My Nuclear Journey 