The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has announced that generator connection records were broken in the National Electricity Market (NEM) last year.
Chief System Design Officer at AEMO, Alex Wonhas said more than 40 projects, totalling nearly 4,900 megawatts (MWs) completed registration or began exporting to the grid during 2020.
“This was achieved despite the COVID-19 pandemic,” Dr Wonhas said.
“It was only possible thanks to strong collaboration between developers, open energy markets, network service providers and the AEMO,” he said.
“Without collaboration and deep insights from all parties, the technical challenges associated with generation projects located in difficult connection conditions would not have been solved.”
He said there was a fundamental generation shift under way in the National Electricity Market, with strong interest in new renewable generation projects driving the pace of the change.
“Favourable generation resources are attracting new projects into remote locations, which may present technical challenges, impacting grid performance, operational stability and connection delays,” Dr Wonhas said.
“Last year’s performance reflects AEMO’s combined efforts with network service providers and project managers to achieve these record levels of new generation, equating to approximately 8.4 per cent of current NEM generation capacity.”
He said the rapid transformation to renewable generation highlighted the critical investment identified in AEMO’s Integrated System Plan to deal with known operational challenges and realise positive consumer outcomes.
