10 February 2021
The shackles on large scale wind and solar farms in South Australia are about to be loosened, with the Australian Energy Market Operator flagging that the maximum amount of large scale wind and solar allowed into the grid at any one time will be lifted by around 15 per cent.
AEMO’s current operating constraints allow for no more than 1750MW of large scale wind and solar (plus rooftop solar) to be generating at any one time, and for a certain amount of gas generators (usually around 300MW) to be operating to provide essential grid services.
Those restraints are about to be relaxed, and up to 2,000MW of wind and solar to generate at any one time, because newly installed synchronous condensers that are to come on line soon will provide some of the “synchronous” system services now provided by gas generators.