Grids & Integration

Before Puerto Rico had a chance to recover from Hurricane Maria, in 2017, it was rocked by earthquakes and then, in September 2022, the island was struck again – this time by Hurricane Fiona. These disasters severely impacted Puerto Rico’s infamously fragile power grid, but have emboldened local communities to take power into their own hands through solar and battery storage, and increasingly in the form of microgrids. Compelled by catastrophic circumstances, Puerto Rico must now push toward energy resilience and in the process may see itself become a model not just for other islands, but mainland grids as well.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency’s recent funding spree has continued after it awarded a further $1.04 million (USD 700,000) to the University of Wollongong for a project that will look to develop national standards for harmonic compliance assessments. The current and rather ad hoc methodologies are proving incapable of addressing the challenges brought with increased renewable energy integration.

The federal and New South Wales governments have combined on a landmark $7.8 billion (USD 5.25 billion) investment to help finance the development of eight critical transmission and renewable energy zone projects as they look to accelerate Australia’s clean energy future.

US researchers have proposed the use of solar inverters in utility-scale solar assets to replace expensive voltage compensators, in order to provide voltage support at night. They said reactive power from PV inverters could be significantly cheaper and suggested the introduction of incentives to convince PV plant owners.

Boundary Power, a union between West Australian standalone power system (SAPS) leader Horizon Power and Ampcontrol, has installed its first off-grid system for an unnamed east coast utility in regional New South Wales.

Australian technology start-up Infravision will team with New South Wales network operator Transgrid in a trial of a “next generation” line-monitoring system designed to optimise the performance of existing electrical transmission infrastructure and support the roll out of more renewable energy.

While the efficiency of solar cells will always be important, scaling innovation in sustainable cell technology and solar deployment, is the new game in town. With hydrogen exports and production of green metals in its sights, Australia has some breakthrough tech coming down the pike, as pv magazine Australia’s Natalie Filatoff reports.

Authorities have provided developer CWP Renewables with the tick of approval for what will be the first big battery in Australia to be added to an existing wind or solar farm with the same connection point in the National Electricity Market.

With Australia’s energy system rapidly transitioning from a traditional dependency on coal-fired power generation towards a future built on renewables, the market operator has detailed the engineering roadmap required for the country’s main power systems to operate on 100% renewable energy more frequently and for longer periods.

A holiday house in New South Wales is thought to be the first residential property in Australia to make the switch to a hybrid solar and green hydrogen standalone power system with network service provider Essential Energy trialling the off-grid technology.