Techno-Economic Modelling Report

This tech­no-eco­nom­ic mod­el was based on input from a a series of work­shops, led by Ekisti­ca as part of sub-project one and has helped inform the Roadmap to 2030 and the path­ways sug­gest­ed to achieve 50% renew­able ener­gy pen­e­tra­tion in Alice Springs in the next six years. 

Results from the mod­el are con­densed into a report, pro­vid­ing analy­sis of exist­ing pow­er sys­tem infra­struc­ture, both cen­tralised and dis­trib­uted, and explor­ing the tech­ni­cal and eco­nom­ic chal­lenges that could emerge dur­ing a tran­si­tion. It explic­it­ly mod­els how large-scale stor­age con­tributes to fre­quen­cy con­trol and reserve requirements. 

The report is dri­ven by the under­stand­ing that tran­si­tion­ing to a high­er pro­por­tion of renew­able ener­gy requires the con­sid­er­a­tion of numer­ous fac­tors, such as the pow­er system’s capa­bil­i­ties, eco­nom­ic via­bil­i­ty, key sys­tem con­straints, espe­cial­ly min­i­mum sys­tem load, and the poten­tial impact on ener­gy con­sumers and stakeholders.

The key out­put of this mod­el­ling work is the opti­mised least-cost com­bi­na­tions of large-scale solar, wind and bat­tery ener­gy stor­age that would enable the Alice Springs pow­er sys­tem to achieve the 50% tar­get under a range of pos­si­ble sce­nar­ios of dis­trib­uted ener­gy resource (DER) uptake (low, mod­er­ate and high) and ther­mal gen­er­a­tion oper­at­ing strate­gies (gas on and gas off permitted).

The find­ings showed that:

• If dis­trib­uted ener­gy resource, such as rooftop solar gen­er­a­tion, con­tin­ues to grow at high lev­els, sys­tem min­i­mum demand would fall below the lev­el it was designed to oper­ate at as soon as 2025, or by 2030 with mod­er­ate uptake. 
• Wind tur­bine gen­er­a­tion was seen to be cost-com­pet­i­tive in solar-only sce­nar­ios with high DER uptake and if some gas gen­er­a­tion remains online, but not for the gas-off option. 
• The uptake of elec­tric vehi­cles is not like­ly to have a sig­nif­i­cant impact on min­i­mum sys­tem demand. 
• Using cen­tralised stor­age from DER gen­er­a­tion would only have a mean­ing­ful affect in high DER uptake scenarios.
• The least-regret deploy­ment strat­e­gy of large-scale renew­ables is also the most cost-effective.

Sub-project 1 also includ­ed a behav­iour­al study, based on a whole of town com­mu­ni­ty sur­vey and a wind study. Both of these stud­ies informed the tech­no-eco­nom­ic mod­el­ling and Roadmap.