The fundamentals of the Australian electricity market has been turned on its head: Not by climate targets, or the increase in large scale wind and solar, but by the huge amounts of rooftop solar PV put on the roofs of homes and businesses across the country.

The uptake of rooftop solar means that peak demand is not the only issue confronting the Australian Energy Market Operator and regulators, it is the growing impact of minimum demand – when rooftop solar soaks up an increasing amount of the market once reserved for coal and gas generators.

On Monday, we noted that rooftop solar had taken a bigger bite out of the Christmas lunch of Victoria’s brown coal generators, sending that state to a new minimum demand level – less than half the capacity of the remaining coal plants.

Read More: https://reneweconomy.com.au/rooftop-solar-is-eating-coal-and-gas-markets-in-every-mainland-state/