Welcome to the July 2019 issue of the NEEA Electricity Update, with data updated to the end of June 2019. The Electricity Update presents data on electricity demand, electricity supply,and electricity generation emissions in the National Electricity Market (NEM), plus electricitydemand in the South West Interconnected System (SWIS).

Since the start of 2018 there hasbeen a marked acceleration in the commissioning and connecting to the grid of new wind andsolar farms, and a corresponding increase in the growth of supply from new solar farms inparticular. The majority of this growth has occurred in Queensland and New South Wales,states which had previously been lagging in the uptake of new zero emission generation.

This issue takes a more detailed look at the growth of new generation in each of the four mainlandstates in the NEM. We also look back into the history of the Australian electricity supplysystem, to compare the changes in generation capacity and generation mix in the NEM withthe changes to electricity supply which occurred during the 1950s, a period during whichchanges which were at least as fast, and arguably more far reaching than those now occurring.