Postcard from Australia: Audrey Zibelman Interview

As noted in a previous blog, the hiring of Audrey Zibelman, former head of the New York Public Service Commission, as the new CEO of the Australian National Energy Market (AEMO) helped shine a spotlight on innovation occurring down under.

A recent report suggests Australian network operators will pay prosumers $2.5 billion annually for grid services by 2050—if customers stay connected to power grids and policy recommendations are implemented in an integrated fashion.

The following is my interview with Zibelman; look for a new report from Guidehouse Insights on integrated DER in Australia this spring.

Can you compare the status of the market for DER innovation in Australia and New York?

"Australia can lead the world in the innovative integration of distributed energy resources (DER). New York, while having a DER strategy in place as part of the Reforming the Energy Vision initiative, has a different objective to its DER vision—at least in the short to medium term. New York developed its strategy based on market incentives to encourage the uptake of DER. Australia, like California and Hawaii, already has a large proportion of DER, mostly in the form of rooftop PV, so using innovative technologies, concepts, and business models are critical to maintaining secure and reliable power while also empowering consumers.

Australia is at the stage where its had excess rooftop PV generation meet up to 48%, 30%, and 20% of demand in South Australia, the Wholesale Electricity Market (WEM) in Western Australia, and Queensland, respectively, during some periods. This is unprecedented. All three locations provide immediate opportunities to demonstrate DER capabilities. This is something AEMO is planning to take an active role in leading."

Why should global vendors active in DER management care about Australia?

"There is no shortage of opportunities. AEMO is focused on the effective and efficient integration of DER, and innovative vendors play a key role in this."

Are there unique challenges in specific regions of Australia?

"We need to have the ability to coordinate DER in aggregate (not just PV) to address system needs. There will be opportunities for businesses to exploit greater periods of negative or near-negative pricing. The WEM in southwestern Australia has the added challenge of being islanded. Queensland has a lot of microgrid opportunities, which are still relatively new in formation."

Is integration of retail and wholesale markets picking up momentum?

"From a wholesale perspective, we believe resources need to be valued based on their service to the market. We have been public in our view on the need for more flexible, dispatchable resources, and these resources need to be priced accordingly."

What do you see as the necessary next steps?

"We need effective coordination of DER. We also need to assess efficacy of emergency mechanisms (such as under- and over-frequency load shedding schemes) in systems with high DER. Effective coordination of DER should see a reduction in network fees as DER can offset the need for network augmentation."

Are there lessons learned from Australia’s remote microgrids that are transferable to where consumers are interconnected to a utility grid?

"We are always keen to learn from what others are doing, and we have been in discussion with Horizon Power about its work. The important thing to remember is that grids are unique—their size, constituents etc. So, we need to be mindful that solutions in one grid won’t necessarily be transferable to another. This is particularly true of utility scale grids. However, microgrids can be of benefit for technical demonstration, and provide useful learning that can be applied to utility scale solutions."