Innovation within electricity networks has become essential in Australia to ensure our 20th century grid is able to deliver power the way consumers of the 21st demand.

Released today at the Great Expectations: The Interactive Grid seminar, the Innovation in the Electricity Network Sector report by Energy Networks Australia highlights the innovations undertaken by energy networks to address the challenges of our evolving energy system.

Energy Networks Australia CEO Andrew Dillon said integrating renewables into the system was a focus, while grid resilience was being improved at a local and system-wide scale.

“The generation, distribution and consumption of energy is undergoing extensive change, particularly with the increase in distributed energy resources such as household solar and storage,” Mr Dillon said.

“Across Energy Networks Australia member organisations, innovative projects are being undertaken to address the challenges to the grid that are occurring with this transformation.

“Previous Energy Networks Australia research outlined how our policy settings and incentives are discouraging Australian research and development into smarter networks.

“It’s important we progress initiatives such as regulatory sandboxing to ensure our grid evolves to serve customers’ needs.”

Today’s report is a product of the Electricity Network Transformation Roadmap (ENTR) and highlights a number of case studies detailing innovative projects by networks.

The benefits associated with the transformation of Australia’s power system include:

• direct participation by customers
• accommodating all generation and storage options
• enabling new products, services, and markets
• providing power quality and reliability
• optimising asset utilisation and providing operational efficiency
• anticipating and responding to system disturbances
• operating resiliently and managing environmental impacts.

ENDS