IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - September/October 2021 - 100

Audrey Zibelman
decarbonization
Australia's journey of energy transition
T
100
THE ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE OF
IEEE Power & Energy Magazine are a
testament to the scale and scope of the
transformational changes of the Australian
power system and the enormous
capabilities of my former organization,
the Australia Energy Market Operator
(AEMO). The closure of coal plants
due to aging and poor economic outlooks,
and the government initiatives
related to the decarbonization of the
power sector, is occurring in one of the
world's most favorable natural environments
for zero-carbon wind, solar, and
hydro resources. This is leading Australia
toward a future where AEMO
expects that up to 100% of our power
at times may be able to be drawn from
renewable resources by 2025.
As we all know, although there may
be differences in policies and system topologies,
the power system, governed by
the laws of physics, operates in the same
way worldwide. Roughly five years ago,
Australia and AEMO suffered their most
difficult year since AEMO was formed
in 2009. On 28 September 2016, a storm
caused a system blackout in South Australia.
The following summer, excessive
heat led to load-shedding events in South
Australia and New South Wales. This
was on top of AEMO's loss when its beloved
Chief Executive Officer Matt Zema
unexpectedly passed away in July 2016.
When I arrived at the Melbourne
airport to take on the chief executive
officer job at AEMO in March 2017,
the TV monitors were reporting a
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPE.2021.3088705
Date of current version: 19 August 2021
ieee power & energy magazine
very public disagreement between Jay
Weatherill, then the premier of South
Australia, and Federal Energy Minister
Josh Frydenberg, over South Australia's
renewable energy program. As
an American, where having local coverage
of energy issues is a major feat, I
learned immediately that energy politics
and the interest in energy in Australia
were going to be different from
what I was used to.
I arrived in Australia from my position
as the chair of the New York Public
Service Commission where, under
Governor Andrew Cuomo, we designed
and put in place a series of reforms.
They were known collectively as the
" New York Renewing the Energy Vision "
to reinvent the industry and better
address policies to integrate clean
energy, provide affordable and reliable
power, and resolve resiliency concerns
in the wake of Hurricane " Superstorm "
Sandy. I discovered that in Australia,
despite the continuing policy debates,
the reforms planned for in New York
were already occurring at a breathtaking
speed for an industry accustomed
to changes that occurred in decades,
not in years or months.
By any measure, the Australian statistics
are impressive. Over the last several
years, the increased pace of residential
rooftop solar means that a new installation
is added every 6 min. Today, in
the National Electricity Market (NEM),
which covers five Australian regions and
the majority of the nation's supply and
demand, the current 9 GW of distributed
solar capacity represents approximately
26% of the total peak system demand of
35 GW. We are modeling scenarios for
the distributed photovoltaics to reach up
to 21 GW by 2025.
On the grid scale, AEMO registered
2.1 GW of wind projects and 2 GW of
solar projects in the NEM in 2020 alone.
The scope for new capacity far exceeds
the capability of our current modeling
systems and power grid for timely integration.
Following the commissioning of
the world-leading 100-MW/129-MWh
Hornsdale battery in South Australia
in 2017, we now have five grid-scale
battery projects in the NEM, totaling
260 MW/334 MWh of storage, with
more to come.
More strikingly, AEMO's long-term
economic and system modeling confirms
that when the aging coal plants retire,
Australia will transition to an affordable
and secure power system comprising
variable renewable resources supported
by storage, hydro, natural gas, and a more
interconnected, two-way network.
Achieving these outcomes will not
be easy. The increased demand for flexibility
when we heavily rely on variable
renewable energy is well known;
less well understood are the challenges.
The increases in renewables can lead
to difficulties in managing voltage and
frequency due to the loss of inertia and
system strength. The same also applies
to predicting when increases in these
types of resources create oscillation
challenges. Furthermore, what are the
right set of policies and approaches
(continued on p. 98)
september/october 2021
in my view
IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - September/October 2021

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