Record electricity surge from renewables bodes well for future: AEMO

AEMO, which regulates interstate electricity and gas markets, is implementing a major engineering program to ensure the grid remains reliable, with no risk of blackouts or interruptions to power supply, even as the share of wind and solar generation increases significantly.

Last year, the East Coast generated an average of 7% of its electricity from large-scale solar farms, 13% from wind turbines and 12% from rooftop solar panels.

More than 3 million households, or one in three homes, now have solar panels installed, the highest per capita rate of any country.

However, as solar power floods the market during the middle of the day and tapers off at night, grid planners must ensure the system remains secure and avoids dangerous spikes in voltage levels.

AEMO predicts that by 2050, 80 per cent of Australian homes will have domestic solar panels, making it an increasingly important form of electricity generation.

That’s why the country’s energy minister signed off on a plan last month to standardize inverters, the devices that convert the direct current generated by solar panels into the alternating current that runs on the grid.

The new standard will ensure that inverters remain connected to the grid during grid outages.

In February this year, strong winds brought down high-voltage power lines, leaving 130,000 homes without electricity and tripping fuses connecting the grid to the Loy Yang A brown coal-fired power plant.

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The energy secretary’s council plan also includes a deal to create nationally consistent rules to allow electric vehicles to export electricity stored in their batteries back to the grid and potentially earn money for doing so.

In February this year, Australia conducted a world-first trial that demonstrated that electric vehicles equipped with the right technology while charging could detect a disruption in grid power supply and send power back to the grid.

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