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Comment by markmark | Hacker News Reader

The other key thing is SAs power use is far smaller than NSW, Victoria and Queensland. So while they can shutdown their coal stations and import if there is a shortfall, those bigger states can't.

For example as I type this Queensland is generating about 4300MW of solar, SA is generating about 1300MW of solar, but SA gets all the plaudits for being green.

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As I type this, QLD is using 77% black coal. SA is using 71% gas.

Over the past 24hrs SA was 83% renewable (solar+wind), 16% gas.

In that same 24hrs QLD was 79% black coal, 12% renewables.

Plaudits seem deserved.

https://aemo.com.au/energy-systems/electricity/national-elec...

That page is showing generation not use. 83% of the power SA generated was renewable, but it wasn't enough to cover their use, so they imported 28% of their power from interstate, renewables cover 45% and the rest was gas. Other states are too big to just import 28% of their power. SA is small enough they can shut down their coal and just import coal-based power from Victoria.

Meanwhile Qld, Vic and NSW each produced more than triple the renewable power SA did today.

https://opennem.org.au/energy/sa1/?range=7d&interval=30m

OpenNEM puts it at 12% imported and states 67.9% from renewables.

Why would SA want to produce multiple times their requirements in renewable energy? Today during the sunny period more than 100% was fulfilled by solar.

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