Alice Springs Future Grid: Final Report

2024

The purpose of this report is to provide a succinct overview of the Alice Springs Future Grid, through the lens of the five different sub-projects – what they did, what they achieved, the challenges and barriers they encountered, and what was learnt.

Type: Report Future Grid publication   Format: PDF

This infor­ma­tion has been pro­duced to share the knowl­edge devel­oped by the Alice Springs Future Grid team and to cre­ate a cen­tral loca­tion to cap­ture the activ­i­ties of the project.

It details the results of the project through the var­i­ous sub-projects, as detailed in the graph­ic below. 


SUB-PROJECT 1 – Mod­el­ling
This sub-project, led by local pro­fes­sion­al advi­so­ry and tech­ni­cal con­sul­tan­cy firm Ekisti­ca, inves­ti­gat­ed the tech­ni­cal and eco­nom­ic chal­lenges pre­sent­ed by increased renew­able inputs. It also con­sid­ered the finan­cial impacts of, and the con­sumer behav­iour required, for such a change. 

Ekisti­ca also led a wind mon­i­tor­ing study and devel­oped a tech­noe­co­nom­ic mod­el, with the result­ing analy­sis used in the Roadmap to 2030 report.

It helped:

  • Increase the body of knowl­edge on wind oppor­tu­ni­ties in Alice Springs
  • Pro­vide insights into the Alice Springs com­mu­ni­ty views of energy
  • Improve the dynam­ic pow­er sys­tem model
  • Devel­op a tech­ni­cal and eco­nom­ic analy­sis on future path­ways to enable more renew­able energy.

SUB-PROJECT 2 – Com­mer­cial micro­grid
This sub-project inves­ti­gat­ed the poten­tial ben­e­fits, con­straints and con­sid­er­a­tions that arise when inte­grat­ing a pho­to­volta­ic (PV) (solar pan­el) and Bat­tery Ener­gy Stor­age Sys­tem (BESS) micro­grid on to a con­strained pow­er network. 

The pro­ject­cre­at­ed a grid-con­nect­ed, island­able micro­grid on the Desert Knowl­edge Precinct’s pri­vate 22kV net­work, with the addi­tion of a 300kW/​358kWh BESS.

The micro­grid deploy­ment and con­nec­tion process were both suc­cess­ful and infor­ma­tive. The engage­ment and co-oper­a­tion of Pow­er and Water, DKA, and oth­er project part­ners has been ben­e­fi­cial for all project par­tic­i­pants and will help inform and improve future projects of a sim­i­lar nature.


SUB-PROJECT 3 – Com­mu­ni­ty solu­tions
This sub-project, under­tak­en by the Arid Lands Envi­ron­ment Cen­tre (ALEC), worked to har­ness the pre­vi­ous­ly demon­strat­ed enthu­si­asm of Alice Springs locals for rooftop solar and engage them in find­ing solu­tions to some of the tech­ni­cal chal­lenges the tran­si­tion to renew­able ener­gy cre­ates for the pow­er sys­tem.

ALEC deliv­ered the com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment and com­mu­ni­ca­tions need­ed for Sub-project 4 – Tar­iff Reform, as well as for the over­all Alice Springs Future Grid project and the wind mon­i­tor­ing study that was part of Sub-project 1 – Modelling.


SUB-PROJECT 4 – Tar­iff reform
This sub-project was led by the NT’s gov­ern­ment-owned ener­gy retail­er Jacana Ener­gy, with sup­port from ALEC under Sub-project 3, and the involve­ment of oth­er project stake­hold­ers includ­ing net­work own­er and oper­a­tor Pow­er and Water Corporation. 

It inves­ti­gat­ed how tar­iffs can be used to change cus­tomer usage pat­terns and incen­tivise the uptake of renew­able ener­gy tech­nolo­gies, includ­ing solar PV and on-site bat­tery stor­age. This was done by cre­at­ing the Solar Con­nect Vir­tu­al Pow­er Plant (VPP) con­nect­ing and man­ag­ing the out­put of 48 renew­able ener­gy systems. 

The VPP test­ed customer’s reac­tions to dif­fer­ent tar­iff options and explored how the out­put of their sys­tems into the grid could be man­aged by the net­work owner.


SUB-PROJECT 5 – Future grid deploy­ments
Alice Springs net­work own­er and oper­a­tor Pow­er and Water Cor­po­ra­tion (Pow­er and Water) led Sub-project 5. This project con­sid­ered the tech­ni­cal chal­lenges it faces in try­ing to achieve the NT Government’s tar­get of 50 per cent renew­able ener­gy on the Alice Springs net­work by 2030.

It inves­ti­gat­ed fac­tors such as fore­cast­ing of solar and net­work load, under­took a dynam­ic export tri­al for sites that are typ­i­cal­ly lim­it­ed in the amount of solar pow­er they can export, and explored new oper­a­tional pro­ce­dures. The aim was to pro­vide more options for net­work sys­tem con­trol to allow more renew­able ener­gy into the sys­tem and there­fore min­imise the amount of non-renew­able gen­er­a­tion (i.e. gas and diesel) required to meet the town’s pow­er needs.