A new white paper released by UNSW Sydney and its partners has outlined a roadmap for maintaining electricity grid security as Australia accelerates its shift towards renewable energy, amid the retirement of coal-fired generators and the rapid scaling of new technologies.
The paper, Securing Power Systems in the Renewable Revolution, was produced by the NSW Decarbonisation Innovation Hub’s Electrification and Energy Systems Network in collaboration with the UNSW Energy Institute and the University of Wollongong.
It examines how increasing levels of renewable generation are reshaping long-standing assumptions about how the national electricity system operates.
According to the authors, Australia’s transition to renewables is already well underway, with renewable penetration reaching between 70 and 80 per cent at times without reported impacts on system security.
The country now has more than 4.3 million rooftop solar installations, alongside a growing number of battery systems. However, the paper notes that operating a highly renewable grid at scale, across different seasons and during extreme conditions, introduces new technical and operational uncertainties.
The white paper identifies a range of technical, regulatory and economic issues that will need to be addressed to ensure continued grid stability.
It aims to support policymakers, industry participants and regulators as they confront what it describes as one of the central challenges of the energy transition: maintaining reliable electricity supply while transforming the grid to support a fully renewable future.
UNSW Energy Institute Industry Professor of Practice and co-author Mark Twidell said the nature of the power system is undergoing a fundamental shift.
“We’re moving from a system governed by physical properties to one controlled by software and power electronics,” he said. “That’s effectively an analogue-to-digital transformation of the network.”
As renewable generation increases, the system is becoming more reliant on inverters, which convert energy from solar, wind and batteries into electricity suitable for the grid.
While inverters can respond quickly and flexibly, the paper notes that they behave differently from traditional synchronous generators during faults or disturbances.
“The main risk isn’t normal day-to-day operation,” Twidell said. “It’s how inverters respond during faults and disturbances, and whether existing protection systems can continue to operate reliably when those responses change.”
He added that the paper calls for closer collaboration across the sector to make better use of existing data to understand inverter behaviour and plan future system needs.
Another issue highlighted is how to maintain stable system frequency, often described as the grid’s “heartbeat”, as conventional generators are phased out. Co-author Ty Christopher, Director of the Energy Futures Network at the University of Wollongong, said the transition raises broader questions about the structure of the power system itself.
“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,” he said.
Christopher also pointed to regulatory challenges, arguing that existing frameworks were designed for a very different system.
“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.”
The paper proposes a national approach to electrification built on partnerships between industry, academia and government. It seeks to address immediate system security concerns while also establishing a longer-term framework to guide decision-making for a wide range of stakeholders.
Its stated aim is to provide a shared evidence base and set of priorities for those shaping Australia’s energy transformation.
Dani Alexander, interim chief executive of the NSW Decarbonisation Innovation Hub and CEO of the UNSW Energy Institute, said the timing of the paper was significant.
“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.
Alexander said she believed Australia had the capability to address the challenges identified. “With early investment and a national approach, I strongly believe that our homegrown ingenuity can solve these challenges to secure our energy future,” she said.
The white paper was authored by Mark Twidell, John Fletcher, Georgios Konstantinou, Felipe Arraño-Vargas, Ty Christopher, Mark Lewis and Dani Alexander.
The report is available for public download, and the authors are scheduled to discuss its findings in a webinar on Thursday 19 February at 12pm AEDT.
