ANALYSIS: 'Australia's power grid was built to transport power from coal-fired power stations to large cities and industrial precincts. But this unsightly, ageing grid isn't designed to cope with a green future. Are grid-scale battery banks the answer?'
, storing excess power close to a renewable zone and transmitting it to another storage system close to cities and towns as the peak load arrives.to relieve transmission systems at risk of congestion when bursts of renewable power arrive.How can we put these to use?
It's in everyone's interests to minimise how many new transmission lines we build. For the government, being able to reduce the size of the build means savings — and less demand on our already stretched workforce. And for local communities, it means some — but not all — new lines could be avoided. How do we make it a reality? Essentially, by embedding these new approaches into the way we plan for the electricity grid of the future. When considering any new transmission lines, planners should assess whether part of the needed transmission capacity could instead be provided by virtual powerlines in the form of batteries, and whether the area is suitable for dynamic line rating schemes.
If we integrate these methods of making the most out of our grid's capacity, we could keep the number of new lines to the minimum while ensuring we can take clean power from where it's produced to where it's needed. Lasantha Meegahapola is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Biomedical Engineering in the School of Engineering, RMIT University. This article first appeared on
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