Customer and distribution energy resources (CER/DER) have potential to bolster Australia’s energy transition needs, but a new Australian think tank, Race for 2030 report, finds the rise of millions of energy resources are not being met with an operating system 100% capable of instantaneously operating them.
The Consumer Energy Unleashed: Mapping Australia’s CER/DER priorities to unlock billions in customer, societal and whole-system value report analyses 200 studies and found limited interest in where Australia’s power systems are heading in the medium to long term and what comprehensive range of functions CER/DER may serve to enable Australia’s future grids.
Image: Race for 230
Former CSIRO Grids and Renewable Energy Integration Domain Leader and report co-author Mark Paterson said adapting the country’s legacy grids toward a Net Zero future remains necessary but a systemic functionality gap exists, needing new system-based tools and capabilities.
“It will certainly not be sufficient to enable the projected four to five-fold increase in rooftop solar. Like other advanced economies, Australia needs to accelerate its capability for whole-system transformation, and the development of integrated enabling systems, which the United Kingdom, the European Union and some parts of North America are well ahead of us on,” Paterson said.
The report found that of the 200-studies reviewed, 1% considered the energy system’s holistic transformation design and 8% the customer and societal objectives for future systems.
Questions about the long-term, beneficial functions of CER/DER in Australian power systems and how the participation of millions of CER/DER enable the grid at the necessary scale and pace, were not asked.
“Ultimately, Australia needs 21st century grids that are capable of empowering and rewarding households, businesses and communities where they choose to use their energy resources in ways that benefit the shared system,” Paterson said.
“Like the many other sectors consumers engage with daily, the technologies exist to bring this free market to life and make it easy for consumers to participate. What’s missing is the integrated program of research and action needed to bring it all together in a timely way.”
The report found that much research to date on CER/DER assumes an infinite scalability of legacy infrastructure historically geared to a unidirectional supply-side context.
“A massive scale of new dispatchable sources of flexibility is required as Australia’s power systems become more volatile and dispatchable synchronous generation is progressively withdrawn,” the report concludes.
“Much of this will need to be sourced from millions of diverse participating CER/DER, that are effectively orchestrated through end-to-end operational coordination models.”
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