A blustery May has helped smash wind energy generation records around Australia, with the Mount Mercer Wind Farm one of the top performing in the country.
An report by infrastructure consultancy firm Pitt and Sherry established that last month wind farms supplied 1299 gigawatt-hours of electricity to the National Electricity Market - 22 per cent higher than the previous record, set in July 2015.
No new capacity has been added in that time so the record was set by the same number of wind farms.
The report found that the generation put a temporary halt to climbing carbon emissions from the electricity sector.
Mount Mercer Wind Farm was one of the top 12 farms for capacity in May, with turbines blowing at a “capacity factor” of 54 per cent.
Farms in Bald Hills and Mortons Lane also led the way for Victoria.
New records were set in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales.
Australian Wind Alliance national coordinator Andrew Bray said the numbers strengthen the case for continued investment in wind around Ballarat.
“For a lot of May, Ballarat would have been using 100 per cent renewable energy,” he said.
“It highlights of the strength of the wind resource around Ballarat.
“We now have a handful of good sized wind farms that are ready to harness that resource. The more we can build (the better).”
The Ballarat region has a proud history of community investment in renewable energy, with Daylesford’s Hepburn Wind the very first community-owned wind farm in the country.
More than 70 community power projects involving wind, solar and biofuel have now sprung up across Australia since.
