Grids & Integration

Every crisis is a crossroads, and Australia is certainly at a crossroads. This week, a host of climate, development and investment leaders are backing Beyond Zero Emission’s green scaffolded Million Jobs Plan of Covid-19 economic recovery.

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has announced a major step forward in the West Murray Zone after it granted registration to one of the biggest solar farm in that troubled part of the grid.

The Western Australia government has installed the state’s sixth grid-connected community PowerBank battery, taking the total number of shared battery storage systems on the Western Power network to 13.

French renewables developer Neoen has announced that final testing of the expanded 150 MW Hornsdale Power Reserve has kicked off. If the tests run smoothly, the extra power will be available to the market within weeks.

A massive solar+storage project nearby Uralla in the New England region of New South Wales has locked in a grid connection agreement with Transgrid.

A very small number of PV systems installed on Australian rooftops are considered to be potentially unsafe, the Clean Energy Regulator’s new report finds. Water entering DC isolators is identified as the greatest risk and the most common cause of PV system failures.

The government’s task is to identify and develop a suite of energy technologies that can provide low-cost, low-emissions electricity system of the future, and the Clean Energy Council says that this can be achieved by leveraging Australia’s comparative advantage and the mature industry built around solar and wind. Technologies that extend the life of higher cost, fossil fuel generation should not be prioritized for investment, the CEC says, instead, the roadmap should focus on plenty of challenges to accelerate renewable energy investment.

The New South Wales government’s plan to deliver a 3 GW renewable energy zone in the state’s Central-West has been met with overwhelming investor interest and project proposals valued at $38 billion. To support the development of the REZ, the state government has quadrupled its funding support, while ARENA has allocated funding for TransGrid’s scoping study that will deliver a business case of the Central-West Orana REZ and provide a template for a national approach.

Amid the urgent need to slow climate change by cutting greenhouse gas emissions, energy efficiency makes sense. But as Australia’s chief scientist Alan Finkel last week warned, we’re not “anywhere close to having that nailed”.

AEMO’s NEM Operations Review of the 2019-2020 Summer finds that mitigation practices helped to prevent what might’ve been a much more difficult summer in terms of the electricity network. However, large-scale and rooftop solar both suffered at the hands of enormous smoke plumes and subsequent forecasting errors.