Electricity sector in Australia

The electricity sector in Australia has been historically dominated by coal-fired power stations, but renewables are forming a rapidly growing fraction of supply.

Renewable sources, comprising solar, wind, hydro, and bioenergy with waste, collectively made up 26.7% of the total electricity generation mix.

[1][2] Due to its large size and the location of its population, Australia lacks a single grid that covers all states, but has a transmission grid that extends along the east coast from Queensland via New South Wales and Victoria to South Australia and also connects via the Basslink submarine DC cable with Tasmania.

[3] Since 2005, wind power and rooftop solar have led to a fast growing share of renewable energy in total electricity generation.

[5] The Australian Government is advancing various reforms through its Powering Australia plan, with a goal for renewables to constitute 82% of the national electricity mix by 2030.

[12] Between 2010 and 2021, total electricity generation increased by 5% to 265 TWh, with coal contributing 53% and natural gas 19%, while renewables accounted for 27%.

Notably, approximately 30% of Australian households have installed solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, representing the highest adoption rate worldwide.

In 2006, the Queensland Government announced plans to privatise the retail arm of Energex and its Allgas distribution network.

In recent years, wind and solar power have been the fastest growing source of energy in Australia.

In 2021, Australia produced 74,679 gigawatt-hours of renewable energy, which accounted for 32.5% of electricity production, which represented an increase of almost 5 percentage points compared to 2020.

[5] In Australia renewable energy is accredited under the GreenPower scheme whereby all distributors are government audited bi-annually to ensure that customers are getting exactly what is described in their purchased products.

In the 2009 settlement period there were 904,716 GreenPower customers Australia-wide, accounting for a total of 2,194,934 MWh of electricity generation, a 10% increase over 2008.

In South Australia, a solar feed-in tariff was introduced for households and an educational program that involved installing PVs on the roofs of major public buildings such as the Adelaide Airport, State Parliament, Museum, Art Gallery and several hundred public schools.

[25] Australia has been internationally criticised in the past for producing very little of its energy from solar power, despite its vast resources, extensive sunshine and overall high potential.

By April 2021, over 2.3 million customers had equipped their homes with solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, representing 30% of all households.

Wind power is a rapidly expanding mode of renewable energy production in Australia with an average annual rate of growth in installed capacity of 35% over the five years up to 2011.

[32] In August 2015, the Victorian government announced financial backing for new wind farms as part of a push to encourage renewable energy in the state, which was expected to bring forward the building of a modest 100 MW of new wind energy in the state, worth $200 million in investment.

In Southern Australia a battery installation was performed to keep the local grid running until backup power could be bought on line.

Queensland is the most decentralised mainland state, and initial local generation and distribution was the only viable option for the supply of electricity in many instances.

The creation of regional, and then a statewide network from 1945 enabled economies of scale and reliability to be obtained, particularly by generating plants.

Within a decade of the statewide network being completed, the establishment of the NEM provided new commercial opportunities for generators and improved reliability of supply.

It contains significant reserves of fossil fuels such as natural gas, coal, and oil – although there are incentives to phase these out in favour of clean energy.

[68] The state has seen a rapid increase in investment in renewable energy, and was the leading producer of wind power in Australia in 2011.

[69] South Australia has been noted for the availability of hot rocks suitable for geothermal electricity generation.

Western Australia has its own grid the South West Interconnected System which is not connected to the rest of country due to distance.