Large-scale solar generated record high shares of electricity in every Australian state but one during the mid-winter month of July, new data has revealed, with much less of that power curtailed than was the case a year earlier.
Solar power generation records in winter are not as rare as you might think in Australia – late last month large-scale solar supplied a record 38.2 per cent of Queensland’s electricity consumption at around 9am on a Sunday morning, beating the state’s previous record of 37.1% set on April 25.
And according to the latest monthly update from Rystad Energy, Queensland was not alone. Utility PV generation reached a record high in every state except South Australia at one point or another over the course of the month.
And while record amounts of solar generation often go hand in hand with high levels of curtailment, Rystad senior analyst David Dixon says the increasing amount of big and small batteries on the grid is starting to address this conundrum.
Dixon says that curtailed generation from utility solar was 80 gigawatt-hours (GWh) in July, down from 114 GWh in July 2025, “no doubt helped by more battery capacity being online.”
