On Tuesday 26 March, ARENA welcomed over 130 delegates to the 6th annual ARENA Insights Forum. The forum, held in Sydney, explored the role of storage for the energy transition, including a range of topics such as the role of batteries in providing system strength to the electricity grid, the need for long-duration energy storage for ensuring reliable energy delivery and the contribution of thermal energy storage projects for decarbonising process heat.
Report extract
- Power purchase agreements (PPAs) are used to match buyers of electricity with generation.
- ‘Clean’ PPAs enable users of electricity to decarbonise their operations, by demonstrating that they are using low carbon electricity.
- Huge growth in corporate clean PPAs.
- However conventional clean PPAs are not sufficiently granular to fully decarbonize.
- 24/7 clean PPAs with LDES can provide this guarantee.
- Greenhouse Gas Protocol, ISO net zero guidelines expected to move towards greater granularity.
Summary extract
The plenary session kicked off with a Welcome to Country given by Gadigal Elder Uncle Allen Murray.
This was followed by a speech from ARENA’s CEO Darren Miller, who emphasized the commitment and focus of ARENA to the storage sector. Darren pointed out the importance of social license and challenges such as supply chain and unfitted market model, highlighting the need for regulatory intervention to overcome those challenges. Darren also welcomed the delegates and noted the importance of their input on how to make these storage technologies successful and on how ARENA can provide support.
