The Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) has released new data visualisation on Australia’s changing generation mix, tracking the change over 50 years.
The AEMC says the restructuring of Australia’s power system is accelerating as coal-fired generators exit and new wind and solar generators connect throughout the grid.
The change in location and type of generation has implications for two new rule change requests to the AEMC on behalf of Adani Renewables relating to marginal loss factors. The AEMC explains what marginal loss factors are and their importance here.
Loss factors have always changed year by year – depending on where new generators are being built and where other generators are closing. What’s changing is the predictability of these loss factors, due to the rapid pace of new generators joining the system and the location of these generators.
The maps show that many new generators are connecting:
- at the remote edges of the national grid, often a significant distance away from electricity consumers, so electricity has further to travel
- in places where lots of other generators are already connected, so some lines are becoming heavily loaded – making them hotter and power losses worse.
As the generation mix changes, and power lines in some areas become more congested, the AEMC says it is essential that new investment in generation and transmission is coordinated. This is the focus of the AEMC’s proposed reforms to the way generators access and use the network to enable the right investment, in the right place at the right time so electricity can be delivered to consumers at the lowest possible cost.
