The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has announced a new study to explore the role household energy devices can play in helping to stabilise the network after major disturbances.
In a statement, ARENA said researchers would develop new tools to monitor how consumer-owned energy resources responded to sudden failures across the electricity network.
“Led by the University of NSW (UNSW), the project will look at the way assets like rooftop solar react to unexpected events such as generator outages or transmission line failures,” ARENA said.
“It has the goal of providing the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) with new ways to manage a safe, secure and reliable system with a high level of rooftop solar.”
It said the study would be led by Naomi Stringer from the UNSW’s School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering, who said important engineering work was needed to integrate the growing number of rooftop solar systems.
“How these systems behave when sitting on our rooftops can have material impacts on the broader electricity grid,” Ms Stringer said.
“Unexpected events such as lightning strikes and equipment failures take place every day in the power grid. Very occasionally major disturbances occur, and the ability of the overall power system to ride through and then recover is key.”
She said that while solar can cause particular issues during disturbances, there was also an opportunity to harness power from rooftop panels to help restore the security of the electricity system.
Chief Member Services Officer at the AEMO, Violette Mouchaileh said the findings of the project would help build a smarter electricity grid that could manage much higher levels of distributed generation.
“It’s making sure we’ve got the tools in place and can support the decisions that consumers are making to invest in these kinds of resources,” Ms Mouchaileh said.
