Australia’s transition to net zero is set to deliver a host of environmental and economic benefits, but getting there will require a genuinely transformative change to the nation’s energy networks.
To enable the full electrification needed to facilitate this net-zero future, Australia’s distribution grids must undergo massive changes funded by large investments.
Now, an Australian engineer is pioneering IntelGrid, an artificial intelligence-based platform that promises to help electricity networks manage the increasing complexities of renewables, electric vehicles and customer energy resources.
“Distribution grids are seeing huge challenges these days,” said RMIT Professor Mahdi Jalili, the leader of the IntelGrid project.
“Around 40 per cent of Australians now have rooftop solar, which is good for customers, but difficult for distributors, because at times of year when there is peak solar generation and not much consumption, everyone starts exporting to the grid.”
In response, distributors look to expand network capacity so they can accommodate the new circumstances, a cost that is ultimately borne by customers in the form of higher electricity bills or – if governments take on the expense – higher taxes. Ultimately, the cost to the consumer can be as much as 30 to 40 per cent of their electricity bill.
IntelGrid, however, uses AI-powered decision-support technologies to help distributors manage these new challenges, delivering smarter, more resilient and more flexible networks.
Planned with precision
By helping electricity distributors to model, plan and manage their networks with precision, IntelGrid allows them to bring new capacity to the grid.
Currently, for instance, a distributor might run simulations that allow it to determine whether a neighbourhood connected to a single transformer could tolerate an increase in rooftop solar.
“There are some network simulation tools that, if given the network topology, can provide results demonstrating whether the network can tolerate the most extreme scenarios that it might experience,” Jalili said.
“In some cases, if they see that the network can’t tolerate those, they might refuse your application to put solar on your rooftop because, in order to do that, the network would need to invest $1 million to operate the transformer.”
The problem, however, is that transitioning to energy sources such as rooftop solar is an essential step in achieving an environmentally sustainable network.
“I’m a huge advocate of full electrification; I think there is no other solution,” Jalili said.
“The only way to meet our net-zero commitments is to fully electrify everything – homes, businesses, our transport – and then to source electricity from clean energy, like rooftop solar or larger scale solar and wind farms.”
As such, IntelGrid can produce more equitable outcomes by allowing distributors to run their simulations in smarter and more accurate ways.
“Let’s say a network wants to see how much they will need to invest in their grid over the next 10 years,” Jalili said.
“IntelGrid can create a load profile of a neighbourhood showing that, for example, 30 per cent of the houses will be electrified and 40 per cent will have electric vehicles. Then it runs the simulation to see what the current network can tolerate and how changes to that scenario can be mitigated or enabled.”
To respond to budget limitations, a distributor can use this information to decide which part of their network would provide the biggest benefit from being upgraded.
The role of the AI is to look at the data – the consumption pattern of customers, the way that they use energy, the way that retailers offer their systems to customers, the way their energy is generated – and then use that to help us make optimal decisions.”
Future reliability
By enabling optimal investments, IntelGrid makes electricity supply more reliable, more secure and more affordable.
Jalili said IntelGrid has received commercialisation funding through the Australian Economic Accelerator Grant and some versions of the technology are being piloted through AusNet, a Victorian distribution network service provider.
He hopes to see IntelGrid fully commercialised over the next few years.
“We are establishing a spinout company to offer the technology professionally to our end users: the networks,” Jalili said.
“That will also help us to offer the solution to an international market as well. IntelGrid will help distributors reduce the size of investment required while maintaining reliability and security of electricity supply.”
The term “net zero” is as good as dead now in the sensible world- Most don’t really knows what it means anyway? What you should be calling your work is Emissions Reduction which most people support.