Speakers

Grid controls for a distributed and renewable grid

Location: Summit

Given the remoteness of many Australian communities and urban centres, microgrids can be a crucial tool in the future. What have learnt thus far?

Location: Summit

Utilities and their customers want the same thing: a safe, stable, reliable grid. At the same time, utility customers are increasingly demanding that their power sources come from renewable sources and that the pricing for those renewable sources are competitive with traditional sources. These concepts are seemingly incompatible under the old model of centralized generation, transmission, and distribution. However, this scenario is possible under the new paradigm of leveraging hundreds, if not thousands of distributed energy resources (DERs). The key to managing those DERs is to break them down into small manageable units and this can be done safely and effectively via microgrids. Forward-thinking utilities are already implementing microgrids and are finding that in addition to enabling increased hosting capacity of renewables, these microgrids offer resiliency benefits and additional revenue opportunities by using battery energy storage units in ancillary market services when they’re not being used to keep the lights on. This session will discuss the role of both islanded and grid-connected microgrids on utility networks and how they can offer a host of benefits regardless of their configuration.

Location: The Grid Hub