I have been saving NemWatch screenshots offline for a few months now to get a handle on what the three NSW large solar power plants actually produce out of their rated capacity of 211MW. Plants are at Nyngan 102MW & Broken Hill 53MW – and Moree 56MW. I made 69 readings, mostly in March (36). If there are more than one per half hour slot – then they are averaged.
AGL’s Nyngan and Broken Hill plants combined are expected to produce 359,000MWhours of electricity per year which equals 40.98MW on a 24/7 basis.
Also check out what the solar industry itself says about demand vs. supply: www.solarchoice.net.au/blog/home-energy-consumption-versus-solar-pv-generation/
Peak household demand is above 1.6 kilowatts from 7 to 9 pm in winter. Solar output at that time – zilch. Plenty of juice of course in the middle of the day in summer – when power demand is 40% lower.
Time was, electricity supply was run by engineers who understood that small niche sources need to be “dispatchable” – i.e. able to be turned on to meet peak demand. An intermittent source like solar that is going full blast when cheap baseload power is there anyway is almost totally useless. And that’s before you even consider that you can’t depend on it anyway – the output literally varies with the weather.