Today the Clean Energy Regulator has approved the accreditation of Stockyard Hill Wind Farm, with a total capacity of 531.9 megawatts it is the largest wind farm to be accredited under the Renewable Energy Target. The previous largest wind farm was Coopers Gap in Queensland at 453 megawatts, which has recently had its final turbine completed.
Image source: Goldwind
The Stockyard Hill Wind Farm, owned and operated by Goldwind, consists of 149 wind turbines located approximately 35 km west of Ballarat, Victoria.
The accreditation of these large renewable energy power stations continues to drive increasing levels of renewable electricity generation. 2020 is expected to be a record year for additional renewable electricity generation, with large-scale generation in 2020 being some 6,000 to 8,000 gigawatt hours higher than in 2019.
So far in 2020, we have accredited a total of 1.3 gigawatts of capacity from 94 renewable energy power stations. These projects are expected to generate over 2,600 gigawatt hours this year, which is enough to power over 460,000 households.
The Large-scale Renewable Energy Target encourages investment in renewable power stations to achieve 33,000 gigawatt hours of additional renewable electricity generation in 2020. In September 2019, we announced the 2020 Large-scale Renewable Energy Target capacity had been achieved. There is now 24 gigawatts of accredited capacity in the Large-scale Renewable Energy Target, with another six gigawatts being tracked in our pipeline of which 3.5 gigawatts is currently under construction and 2.3 gigawatts have signed power purchase agreements. The continued investment and delivery of additional renewable energy capacity will provide further carbon abatement in the electricity sector.
Our April Large-scale Renewable Energy Target market data and our quarter one Quarterly Carbon Market Report will be published later this month.