Integrating Renewables into the Grid: Stocktake Project

Australia looks toward a future with a greatly expanded market share for renewable generation, including distributed renewable solutions. The increased penetration of distributed generation technologies, however, does not come without its challenges and risks. Our current electricity infrastructure is not designed to cope with the future increasing levels of electricity produced from fluctuating renewable energy sources. As a result a revised network infrastructure is required. Although the fundamental challenge remains the same – “power must be available when energy consumers need it” – the approach is becoming different.

Whilst these opportunities and challenges are easily identified there continues to be limited capacity in the market whereby stakeholders are able to either coordinate projects or share their knowledge, experience and ultimately results. ARENA has therefore decided to develop a central repository of all projects completed, underway or in planning relating to integrating renewable energy into distribution networks.

The objective of this stocktake is to build and share a detailed picture of knowledge, experience, barriers and near-term priorities in the sector for managing distributed energy resources in distribution networks.The final stocktake includes 176 projects: 116 from Australia and the remainder from overseas. We have gathered projects for this stocktake from a variety of sources, including network operators, industry associations, governments, technology proponents, electricity retailers, governments and academic institutions.