On 13 January 2021, a thick cloud band moved across South Australia, causing over 400 MW of renewable energy generation to rapidly become unavailable.

While AEMO’s centralised forecasting system was unable to predict the cloud band, Solcast’s Nowcasting trial successfully forecasted the timing, magnitude and associated ramping events.

This development in ‘nowcasting’ can inform AEMO of future ramping events and balance rapid changes in generation and demand.

Image: Solcast imagery of the cloud band.

Read Solcast's lessons from the Nowcasting Demonstration trial 

We asked Dr Nick Engerer, the Chief Technology Officer at Solcast, a couple of questions about the ramping event, including his thoughts on the importance of forecasting renewable energy output to maintain system security and resilience. 

Here are some of the highlights:

“...Single cloud events [that] bring cloud cover very suddenly, and also have it depart very quickly, will obscure all those rooftop solar sites within the same 30 to 60 minute window, which means that with half a gigawatt plus of solar, maybe 60 to 70% of that will effectively ramp down.”

“...the fundamental role that AEMO holds of balancing supply and demand is now subject to an effect that is equivalent to a large coal power plant being unavailable for a few hours suddenly."

“...the importance of this work goes further than simple supply-demand balance. It goes on to whole-of-network security and resilience.”
 

Image: Graph showing Solcast + TESLA, and AEMO Forecast vs Actual Demand during the ramping event.

Read our full interview with Dr Nick Engerer 

On 27 May 2021, the Knowledge Sharing team hosted an ARENA Insights Webinar on Advanced Inverters. The webinar showcased presentations from market bodies and ARENA projects including Powerlink’s Grid Forming Inverter study, Neoen’s Hornsdale Power Reserve Upgrade, the Monash University Weak Grids Study and Transgrid’s Wallgrove big battery.

Highlights include:

• Powerlink reported that properly-tuned grid forming inverters and batteries need only half the capacity that a syn-con would need to achieve the same level of control.
• Tesla reported that Virtual Machine Mode has great potential and could provide over a quarter of South Australia’s total requirements for inertia once fully implemented at the Hornsdale Power Reserve.
• Monash University reported on a method of determining the stability of inverters in various grid situations.

Image: ARENA Insights Webinar.

Watch the ARENA Insights Webinar on Advanced Inverters 

Battery Storage

• Infigen’s second Operational Report on the Lake Bonney Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) has been released, which summarises the operations of the BESS in its second 6-month period of operation. Read Infigen’s report.
• TransGrid is developing the Wallgrove Grid Battery to pilot synthetic inertia services using BESS technology. The first lessons learned report addresses key challenges from early works on the project. Read TransGrid’s report.

Solar PV R&D

• The first report in ARENA’s Generator Operations Series prepared by Ekistica in partnership with the CEFC was recently published. This report investigates lessons learnt from operational data provided by large-scale solar projects funded by ARENA and the CEFC. Read Ekistica’s report.
• The University of New South Wales project; Prototyping a Photoluminescence Imaging Tool shares lessons learnt from designing and building a fully functioning alpha-prototype outdoor PL imaging system. The system was subsequently tested and improved upon at three distinctly different solar power plants in NSW. Read UNSW’s report.

Electric Vehicles

• Origin’s interim report for their Sydney Electric Vehicle Smart Charging Trial project details lessons learnt and details insights into EV charging patterns and behaviours of residential and business customers. Read Origin’s report.

DER

• AGL shares its final knowledge sharing report including outcomes, highlights and challenges for their Virtual Power Plant in South Australia. Read AGL’s report.
• South Australia Power Networks in partnership with Tesla and the CSIRO share their final knowledge sharing report for their Advanced Virtual Power Plant Grid Integration project. Read SAPN’s report.
• AEMO explores lessons learnt with regard to Project Energy Demand and Generation Exchange (‘Project EDGE’) in their first knowledge sharing report. The project will develop and test the concept of a  marketplace for DER services. Read AEMO’s report.
• Flow Power’s Energy Under Control project provides demand response across New South Wales for the ARENA Demand Response Trial. The final report shares project performance knowledge and lessons shared for the period between November 2019 – May 2020. Read Flow Power’s report.

Hydrogen

• The 16 research teams working on ARENA’s Hydrogen R&D projects joined an online roundtable event hosted by the Melbourne Energy Institute in February 2021. Slides from the presentations across the two days have now been published. View the slides here.

Bioenergy and energy-from-waste

• Susmet have prepared a proof of concept life cycle assessment report for the East Rockingham Waste to Energy project. The life cycle assessment report compares the greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel resource depletion resulting from the East Rockingham Waste to Energy facility to the reference system of black coal power generation. Read Susmet’s report.

Energy Integration

• Industrial Monitoring & Control have, in partnership with CSIRO, UNSW and the University of South Australia, released the final report for their Solar Power Ensemble Forecaster project. This final report presents the summary and finding of fourteen real-time solar power forecasting models that were developed, deployed and continuously improved on five solar farms over nine months. Read IMC’s report.