As Australia accelerates its shift to renewable electricity, power system security faces unprecedented challenges from retiring coal plants and scaling new technologies.
The White Paper, Securing Power Systems in the Renewable Revolution, released by the NSW Decarbonisation Innovation Hub’s Electrification and Energy Systems Network, UNSW Energy Institute, and University of Wollongong, charts a clear path forward.
Australia’s energy transition is not a leap into the dark. Renewable penetration has already reached 70-80 per cent at times, without compromising system security.
Nationally, there are more than 4.3 million rooftop solar connections, alongside a rapidly growing battery ecosystem.
However, operating a highly renewable grid at scale, across seasons and under extreme conditions introduces new uncertainties.
The White Paper identifies the critical technical, regulatory and economic issues that must be addressed to ensure grid security.
It aims to help the sector navigate one of the most critical technical, policy and economic challenges of the energy transition: keeping the lights on while transforming the grid for a fully renewable future.
Authors including Mark Twidell, John Fletcher, Georgios Konstantinou, Felipe Arraño-Vargas, Ty Christopher, Mark Lewis, and Dani Alexander emphasise partnerships between industry, academia, and government.
“We’re moving from a system governed by physical properties to one controlled by software and power electronics,” said UNSW Energy Institute Industry Professor of Practice Mark Twidell, a White Paper co-author.
“That’s effectively an analogue-to-digital transformation of the network.”
The system increasingly relies on inverters to convert renewable energy into grid-ready power.
They are fast and flexible but respond differently from traditional generators during disruptions.
“The main risk isn’t normal day-to-day operation,” Mark said.
“It’s how inverters respond during faults and disturbances, and whether existing protection systems can continue to operate reliably when those responses change.
“The White Paper calls for closer industry collaboration to harness existing data to understand inverter behaviour and plan ahead.”
A key concern is maintaining the grid’s ‘heartbeat’, the steady frequency that keeps electricity stable, without traditional generators.
“At some point we have to ask whether we’re still connecting new things to a legacy grid, or whether the new things are the grid,” said co-author Ty Christopher, Director of the Energy Futures Network at the University of Wollongong.
“We’re trying to manage a 21st-century grid with 20th-century regulation,” he said.
“Those rules were written for a system that simply no longer exists.”
Dani Alexander, interim CEO of the NSW Decarbonisation Innovation Hub and CEO of the UNSW Energy Institute, stressed urgency.
“With the Australian Energy Market Operator last year highlighting emerging risks to system security, we need to quickly answer the unresolved questions in this paper to support the rapid rollout of renewables,” she said.
“With early investment and a national approach, I strongly believe that our homegrown ingenuity can solve these challenges to secure our energy future.”
