Biggest Australian renewable energy generators in 2012

The Poatina hydro power station in Tasmania created 820,000 Large-scale Generation Certificates (LGCs) for 2012 generation and was the largest creator of certificates for the year. The next nine largest LGC creators were all wind farms.

Wind is the largest creator of LGCs, accounting for 60 per cent, with hydro the next biggest at 20 per cent. Following a detailed analysis of data contained in the REC-Registry on May 14 2013, Green Energy Markets has produced this Research Note which analyses the power stations that have created the most LGCs (refer to Table 1).

Table 1 – Top 10 LGC creators

The Poatina power station is a baseline power station first commissioned in 1965. It is able to produce LGCs to the extent that its power generation is above its 1997 baseline of 1,034 GWh. Power stations have until December 31 to produce LGCs for 2012 generation and we expect that considerably more LGCs will still be created for Poatina for 2012.

The Collgar Wind farm (206 MW) in Western Australia, started operating in mid-2011 and produced the second most LGCs in 2012 with 686,235. The Macarthur wind farm in western Victoria (420 MW) became fully operational in January 2013 and by capacity is Australia’s largest wind farm. We expect that for 2013 it will be the wind farm that produces the most LGCs.

The power stations producing the most LGCs in each of the other renewable fuel categories are summarised in Table 2 below. Of particular note is that waste coal mine gas generators were included in the Renewables scheme for generation from July 1 last year.wer Station State Fuel LGCs in 2011 LGCs in 2012

Table 2 – Largest LGC creators for other renewable fuel categories

In total 11.3 million LGCs were created for electricity generated in 2012 (as at 14 May 2013). We estimate that there are still two million LGCs yet to be created for 2012 generation, largely from baseline hydro generators (refer to Table 3). We estimate that a total of 13.2 million LGCs will eventually be created by power stations for 2012 generation, a 31 per cent increase on 2011 levels.

Wind is the largest creator of LGCs, accounting for 60 per cent, with hydro the next biggest at 20 per cent.

Table 3 – LGC creation by power stations by fuel source for 2012 generation year

The analysis above is an extract from Green Energy Market’s Renewable Power Station Report (May 2013) that is available on a subscription basis.

Ric Brazzale is Managing Director of Green Energy Markets.