The record might have been a lot higher: More than one half of available wind output was being curtailed and nearly half of large scale output was being curtailed, despite near record levels of storage, particularly from the growing fleet of big batteries on the grid.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/renewables-80-928x500.jpg\")
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The curtailment occurred because rooftop solar was meeting more than half of demand, and the grid is not yet ready to meet 100 per cent renewables, which would require all coal and gas fired generation to be switched off. That won\u2019t happen until the market operator is satisfied that grid forming inverters can meet all the system security needs.<\/p>\n
And coal fired generators went about as low as they can go without being switched off \u2013 which they don\u2019t like doing \u2013 and were reduced to a share of just 18.8 per cent of demand. So something had to give.<\/p>\n
Geoff Eldridge, from GE Nemlog, described the event as a significant milestone for the National Electricity Market \u2013 the formal name for the country\u2019s main grid that covers most of Queensland, NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania.<\/p>\n
Eldridge says that at 12:30pm on Saturday, approximately 8.42 GW of large scale wind and solar output, about equal amounts of wind and solar. Curtailment happens because of economic reasons (wind and solar farms choose not to operate when prices are below zero), and because of grid congestion or maintenance.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy 13:50 AEST, the NEM had already curtailed around 54.8 GWh of renewable energy, while flexible loads absorbed around 22.5 GWh, including about 17.3 GWh into batteries and about 5.2 GWh into pumped hydro,\u201d he noted in a post on LinkedIn.<\/p>\n
He also noted that there would have been a significant absorption capacity of behind-the-meter home batteries. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo during the first interval in which renewables exceeded 80% of NEM consumption, the system was simultaneously:<\/p>\n
\u2022 supplying more than four-fifths of consumption from renewables and storage
\u2022 reducing coal to less than one-fifth of consumption
\u2022 absorbing more than 5.3 GW of flexible load
\u2022 charging batteries at around 4.5 GW
\u2022 and curtailing another 8.4 GW of available renewable output<\/p>\n
\u201cThat combination is becoming an increasingly important part of the NEM transition story.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is no longer simply: more renewables means less coal. Increasingly it is: more renewables share \u2192 less thermal generation share + much larger flexible loads + batteries absorbing surplus energy + significant renewable curtailment<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd today, for the first time, that transition took renewable supply beyond 80% of NEM consumption.\u201d<\/p>\n
To join more than 29,000 others and get the latest clean energy news delivered straight to your inbox, for free, click here to subscribe to our free daily newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n To support independent media, and help combat the spread of deliberate misinformation and disinformation about the energy transition, you can click here to make a one off donation or become a regular supporter of Renew Economy.<\/a><\/p>\n Giles Parkinson is founder and editor-in-chief of Renew Economy<\/a>, and founder and editor of its EV-focused sister site The Driven<\/a>. He is the co-host of the weekly Energy Insiders Podcast<\/a>. Giles has been a journalist for more than 40 years and is a former deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review. You can find him on LinkedIn and on Twitter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Renewable energy has broken through another key milestone on Australia\u2019s main grid, meeting more than 80 per cent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":897831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,75,952,128],"class_list":["post-897830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-environment","tag-featured","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=897830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/897830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/897831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=897830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=897830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=897830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/a744e55263b8496e46485bfbaa45b4ff7538a517cfd6f6650798459db78775d2.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n