Rising wind and solar generation have brought down wholesale power prices while government intervention has cut forward prices, the energy market operator said.
Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen said the latest AEMO numbers show wholesale prices are continuing to decline from their peak during last winter.“Importantly it shows the sharp decline in energy futures from December after the Government announced the energy price relief plan,” Mr Bowen said.
Electricity generated from renewable energy rose to the highest on record on average in the quarter, AEMO said, while the contribution from both coal and gas power fell. Coal-fired power was at its lowest level since the National Electricity Market started in 1998, with the market operator pointing to outages in Queensland and coal power generators being undercut in pricing by large-scale renewables.
Renewables set a record too for supplying the biggest share of electricity demand at any one time, reaching 68.7 per cent in the NEM on October 28, and even higher in the Western Australian power grid, at 84.3 per cent on December 12, mostly driven by high output from rooftop solar. on November 12 after a transmission tower failure. The isolation of the state caused periods of “extreme volatility”, AEMO said, in both energy pricing and grid control services. Generation from rooftop solar systems had to be curtailed for about 4-10 hours a day for six days.
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