Activities

Alice Springs faces com­plex chal­lenges to increas­ing the amount of renew­able ener­gy in its pow­er sys­tem. The bar­ri­ers are main­ly tech­ni­cal, reg­u­la­to­ry and eco­nom­ic. Solu­tions can be found in these areas, as well as through com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment. The ulti­mate aim of Future Grid is to out­line a path­way to show how Alice Springs can achieve the North­ern Ter­ri­to­ry Gov­ern­ment tar­get of 50 per cent renew­able ener­gy by 2030, and pos­si­bly beyond. How­ev­er, there are finan­cial lim­i­ta­tions, so the project is inves­ti­gat­ing the best use of exist­ing infra­struc­ture, com­ple­ment­ed by new tech­nolo­gies. Future Grid is deliv­ered through a series of inno­v­a­tive tri­als, mod­els and inves­ti­ga­tions. Exam­ples include estab­lish­ing the first res­i­den­tial Vir­tu­al Pow­er Plant (VPP) in the NT along­side a tar­iff tri­al, a wind study, a com­mer­cial micro­grid tri­al, and cre­ation of dynam­ic mod­els to mod­el future scenarios. 

Future Grid brings togeth­er a broad range of Project Part­ners to devel­op and deliv­er a sys­tems-wide project that will assist in iden­ti­fy­ing and address­ing the var­i­ous bar­ri­ers to more renew­ables. Part of its lega­cy will be con­tin­ued col­lab­o­ra­tion between Project Part­ners, as well as an informed com­mu­ni­ty which can advo­cate for meet­ing the NT’s renew­able ener­gy tar­get and con­tin­u­ing the jour­ney beyond that goal. A key deliv­er­able of the project will be a Roadmap to 2030 report, which will inform gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy and guide the imple­men­ta­tion of rec­om­mend­ed inter­ven­tions in pur­suit of the 2030 target.