Exploring ways for renters to benefit from solar power and renewable energy transition is the focus of a new project at The Australian National University (ANU).
Led by Dr Lee White, Mara Hammerle and Dr Bjorn Sturmberg, the project, How can we involve renters in the renewable energy transition in Australia? has secured funding from Energy Consumers Australia.
The Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program at the Australian National University, along with project partners Southcoast Health and Sustainability Alliance, network operator Essential Energy, and technology company Zepben, are delighted by news of successful project funding under the Regional and Remote Communities Reliability Fund (RRCRF) – microgrids 2020-21.
The Southcoast Microgrid Reliability Feasibility (SµRF) project will engage NSW South Coast Eurobodalla residents, businesses, and Essential Energy in planning the transition from a bushfire exposed grid to a resilient grid of islandable microgrids.
The project partners will receive $3.125M in funding over three years under the RRCRF to:
Our new paper in Nature Energy asks fundamental questions of what values and biases algorithms are encoding into our digital energy system.
Abstract below:
The digital energy era presents at least three systemic concerns to the design and operation of algorithms: bias of considerations towards the easily quantifiable; inhibition of explainability; and undermining of trust and inclusion, as well as energy users’ autonomy and control. Here we examine these tensions through an interdisciplinary study that reveals the diversity of possible algorithms and their accompanying material effects, focused on neighbourhood-scale batteries (NSBs) in Australia. We conducted qualitative research with energy sector professionals and citizens to understand the range of perceived benefits and risks of NSBs and the algorithms that drive their behaviour. Issues raised by stakeholders were integrated into NSB optimization algorithms whose effects on NSB owners and customers were quantified through techno-economic modelling. Our results show the allocation of benefits and risks vary considerably between different algorithm designs. This indicates a need to improve energy algorithm governance, enabling accountability and responsiveness across the design and use of algorithms so that the digitization of energy technology does not lead to adverse public outcomes.
Full text available here https://rdcu.be/cpu0G
“The electric vehicle transition is about more than just doing away with vehicles powered by fossil fuels. We must also ensure quality technology and infrastructure, anticipate the future and avoid unwanted outcomes, such as entrenching disadvantage.
Australia’s world-leading rollout of rooftop solar power systems offers a guide to help navigate the transition. We’ve identified three key lessons on what’s gone well, and in hindsight, what could have been done differently.”
Full piece in The Conversation https://theconversation.com/check-your-mirrors-3-things-rooftop-solar-can-teach-us-about-australias-electric-car-rollout-162085
It’s timely to consider how we can build a better system – one that’s more resilient in times of disaster and also doesn’t contribute, through carbon emissions, to making disasters more frequent.
One part of the solution is more connectedness, so one transmission line being severed is not the crisis it is now.
But just as important is ensuring connectedness isn’t crucial.
This means moving away from centralised systems – powered by a few big generators – to decentralised ones, with many local and small-scale generators. Instead of one big grid, we need many microgrids, interconnected but able to operate independently when necessary.
Full Piece in The Conversation https://theconversation.com/microgrids-how-to-keep-the-power-on-when-disaster-hits-130534
While there are now more solar panels in Australia than people, the many Australians who live in apartments have largely been locked out of this solar revolution by a minefield of red tape and potentially uninformed strata committees.
In the face of these challenges, Stucco, a small co-operative housing block in Sydney, embarked on a mission to take back the power. Hopefully their experiences can serve as a guide to how other apartment-dwellers can more readily go solar.
Full piece in The Conversation https://theconversation.com/get-in-on-the-ground-floor-how-apartments-can-join-the-solar-boom-79172
Electric vehicles can help keep the air clean in our cities – as we’ve seen recently with the reduction of traffic through COVID-19 lockdowns – but they face two obstacles.
In the short term they’re still expensive. In the long term charging millions of vehicles from the electricity grid presents challenges.
I’m part of a new project, launched today, that tackles both of these obstacles head-on, and it could mean owners earn more money than they’re likely to pay for charging their electric vehicles.
Full piece in The Conversation https://theconversation.com/owners-of-electric-vehicles-to-be-paid-to-plug-into-the-grid-to-help-avoid-blackouts-132519
“I see this as everyone is a winner. The proposition for tenants is they don’t have to change anything that they are doing, they are just now having their electricity bills reduced and they also get to feel better by having that cheaper power also be cleaner power,” Dr Sturmberg said.
“For generators, power purchase agreements (PPA) have been really quite an important way to de-risk their investments in their developments.
“What is happening in that PPA is you’re locking in the rates all the consumers will be paying for that power – that means as a generator you have certainty.”
Dr Sturmberg, who is also the founder of social enterprise SunTenants, says to date these types of energy deals have largely been driven by governments, despite demand from renters and smaller entities.
“It is a really great way for consumers of electricity to have a more direct relationship or direct buying power towards renewables rather than just buying from the national electricity market,” he said.
“PPAs have started to become more accessible to smaller entities and currently the ACT government has been extremely successful with its power purchase agreement. It’s made the Territory powered by 100 per cent renewable electricity and has in the process saved Canberra millions of dollars.”
Full article in The Fifth Estate here https://thefifthestate.com.au/innovation/residential-2/everyones-a-winner-pica-group-secures-australian-first-strata-solar-electricity-deal/
This week, ACT Labor proposed a network of large batteries in the territory that will have a total capacity of 250 megawatts. That’s two-thirds larger than the world’s current largest battery, which is in South Australia, and may well be amongst the top 50 by the time it’s completed.
While little is known yet about the plans beyond the headline, the capacity and the budget spend ($100 million over five years), the general concept is commendable.
The ability to store electricity, such as in batteries, is increasingly critical for us to continue the transition to a zero-emissions future. By supporting battery storage, an investment like this will continue the territory’s international leadership on clean energy, following in the footsteps of the very successful and influential wind and solar reverse auctions.
The proposal is to distribute the batteries across the ACT. This is an excellent move, because it will showcase the versatility of batteries to provide services in a diversity of settings.
Full OpEd in The Canberra Times https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6951076/acts-big-battery-pledge-is-a-step-forward/
An OpEd originally published in The Canberra Times.
Australia’s horror bushfire season isn’t over yet, but we know that the losses this summer will remain with us for decades.
As we rebuild, we must redesign all aspects of life for a hotter, drier, and more intense climate – including how we build and operate the power system.
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