AEMO, which oversees the interstate power and gas markets, is delivering a major engineering program to make sure the grid remains reliable, without the risk of blackouts or disruptions to power supply, even as the share of fluctuating wind and solar power generation soars.
Last year, an average of 7 per cent of east-coast electricity came from large-scale solar farms, 13 per cent from wind turbines and 12 per cent from rooftop solar panels.
More than 3 million homes – or one in three – are now fitted with solar panels, the highest per-capita take-up rate of any nation.
However, with solar power flooding the market with abundant electricity in the middle of the day before receding in the evenings, grid planners must ensure the system remains secure and avoids dangerous spikes in voltage levels.
AEMO expects household solar panels to be on 80 per cent of Australian households by 2050, making it an increasingly significant form of electricity generation.
That’s why the nation’s energy ministers last month signed off on a plan that would standardise their inverters. These devices convert the direct current electricity generated by solar panels into the alternating current that operates on the grid.
The new standards would ensure inverters remain connected to the grid if the network is disrupted.
In February, gale-force winds downed high-voltage power lines and left 130,000 homes without power, effectively tripping a fuse that connected the grid to the Loy Yang A brown coal plant.
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The energy minister’s council plans also included an agreement to set up nationally consistent rules for electric vehicles to export power stored in their batteries back into the grid, and potentially earn money for doing so.
A world-first Australian trial proved, in February this year, that electric vehicles fitted with appropriate technology at the point of charging can detect a disruption in the grid’s electricity supply and send power back into the network.
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Source Agencies
