South Australia broke another wind power record during August, with the state's wind farms providing the equivalent of just under 40 per cent of the state's power, the Clean Energy Council said today.
- Australia’s wind farms generated 1024 gigawatt-hours in August, enough to make more than 6 billion (6,144,000,000) toasted sandwiches using an average sandwich press – almost enough for each person on Earth.
- These sandwiches – assuming a stacked thickness of 2 cm – would stretch for a distance of 122,800 km.
- The Earth has a circumference of 40,075 km, meaning the stacked sandwiches would go around the earth more than three times, or make it a third of the way to the moon.
- Australia’s wind farms provided a record amount of power in August, setting new benchmarks in South Australia, Victoria, NSW and Tasmania and beating the previous national record by more than a third.
- Wind power produced eight per cent of the power in the National Electricity Market during the month (1024 gigawatt-hours). This is enough to power Parliament House in Canberra for more than 40 years.
- South Australia’s wind farms provided enough power for the equivalent of 38 per cent of the state’s power during August, beating the previous record of 31.2 per cent from August 2012.
- Victoria’s wind farms produced the equivalent of 7.9 per cent of the state’s electricity over the month, beating the previous record of 5.4 per cent.
- Tasmania produced 11 per cent of its power from wind energy (previous best 7.5 per cent), while NSW produced 1.8 per cent of its electricity (previous best 1.5 per cent).