Tasmania has reached its target of becoming “100% renewable”, with the capacity and capability to generate more renewable electricity annually than average consumption. This gives Tasmania a massive boost in securing the reliability of the state’s energy supply.
In 2017, the Tasmanian Energy Security taskforce found that Tasmania needed an extra 700 to 1000GWh generated on the island in order to balance supply and demand. Although Tasmania is connected to the National Electricity Market we currently only have one connection to the mainland, Basslink – meaning there is no redundancy if anything goes wrong. The annual generation of Tasmania’s many hydro electric power stations is not limited by their capacity, but rather by the the annual inflow of water – which has been reducing since the mid-1970s. The annual deficit between supply and demand was previously filled by The Tamar Valley Power Station, and by importing more electricity than we export to the NEM.
Since 2017, two new wind farms have been constructed – Cattle Hill Wind Farm and Granville Harbour Wind Farm. This puts Tasmania in a secure position to rely on its own renewable generation if a significant energy security event were to occur in the future.
You can read the Tasmanian Energy Security Taskforce report here
