As coal fades out of Australia's National Electricity Market (NEM), there will be a need for a significant increase in the installed capacity of dispatchable energy storage and other technologies.
The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) recently proposed the Integrated System Plan (ISP).
With the increasing proportion of variable power generation resources such as photovoltaics and wind power in NEM, NEM urgently needs other resources to integrate these fluctuating forms of power generation and help balance the grid.
AEMO noted that as of now, around 23GW of dispatchable generation capacity has come from coal-fired generation, 11GW from natural gas and other fuels, 7GW from hydropower (excluding pumped hydro) and only 1.5GW from dispatchable storage (including batteries and pumped hydro) energy storage).
By 2050, reliable generation capacity must be met without the help of coal, which is not only at odds with Australia's climate and environmental goals, but is also gradually losing economic competitiveness in the NEM.
With ongoing market reforms, more responsive, cleaner resources such as energy storage and integrated renewables are expected to grow rapidly.
AEMO expects that by 2050, reliable power generation resources include:
- 46GW/640GWh of dispatchable energy storage
- Existing 7GW non-pumped hydro
- 10GW of gas peak shaving resources
AEMO expects that the majority of dispatchable energy storage will come from distributed energy storage resources, including virtual power plants (VPPs), vehicle-to-grid integration (V2G) and other emerging technologies.
This is mainly because the penetration of rooftop PV in most parts of Australia is already high and continues to grow, and AEMO points out that home solar power systems with battery storage will be a more common form in the future.
About 31GW of energy storage needs are expected to be met by distributed resources, with the remaining about 16GW being utility-scale batteries and pumped hydro.
However, 46GW/640GWh of dispatchable storage means that the average storage duration will be more than 10 hours, which will mainly come from large-scale or utility-scale storage installations.
In the short term, ISPs have also proposed projects that can be acted upon immediately, such as some large-scale transmission infrastructure construction projects. Some of these investment plans are related to energy storage, such as the transmission hub in NSW, which will add 1500MW of interconnection capacity between the Waratah Super Battery project and Victoria and Tasmania, which will help Tasmania to Renewable energy is fed to NEM in mainland Australia through batteries and pumped hydro.
