“An exciting time, but not an easy time” for Australia’s energy sector

Australia’s experience of climate change is likely to differ markedly across our vast landmass, but it’s well accepted that we’ll see more frequent and intense extreme weather events. If the floods, fires and storms of the last few years are anything to go by, it’s hard to imagine how much worse a future picture could look. What does this mean from an energy resilience perspective?

“Networks businesses have heavily invested in improving network reliability and under normal operating conditions our electricity supply is more reliable than ever,” says Felicity. “However, regulatory frameworks have long been underpinned by the assumption that exempting major weather events from incentive schemes provides greater cost-effectiveness for consumers. That is, it is cheaper to pay for storm damage clean up after the fact than it is to build and maintain a network which can withstand the storm impact. The effects of climate change challenge this assumption and we need to broaden our thinking.”

She says that regardless how much money is invested in the transmission and distribution network, it’s unlikely that the risk of a long outage can ever be pushed as low as zero. This is especially the case in Australia, where there is so much distance to cover and areas that are only sparsely populated.

“Outages are usually due to trees crashing through the distribution network rather than from major events taking out transmission towers. With hundreds of thousands of kilometres of lines exposed to the elements, there will always be outages.”

“The increasing frequency of major weather events will bring a consequent increase in power outages. As the extent of damage increases, the complexity of the restoration also increases,” she explains.

Taking a consumer point of view on resilience

“I think it’s important that we look at energy resilience from a consumer point of view rather than just considering asset hardening and network augmentation,” says Felicity. “For consumers, energy resilience is about still being able to live everyday life, regardless of what happens in the outside world.

“Sometimes it might mean accepting that some lines will go out during a major event, but that another system could be put in place to kick in when that happens. This is already happening in parts of Victoria where there are opportunities for microgrids and standalone power systems that can support communities through major events.

“When you put a wind or solar or BESS installation into a community, in addition to the run-of-the-mill connection into the existing grid there’s also scope to look at how that generation source and the network build could potentially provide greater energy resilience to the local area as well as nearby areas,” she says.

Given that diesel generation is still part of many microgrid situations in remote areas across the country, it’s important to explore cleaner solutions based on current technologies that are also affordable. “An assessment would need to be made as to what could give the best outcomes, and it can’t just be a matter of what’s cheapest,” she explains. “The cost has to be weighed against the community benefit and the cost to consumers.

“In terms of energy resilience, a more decentralised power system tends to be a more resilient one, because it has fewer single modes of failure,” continues Felicity. “Decentralisation gives a level of protection which has an inherent upside for energy resilience.”

Putting communities at the core of the energy system

Felicity emphasises that the social performance of different network solutions is crucial to the energy transition. “It’s not just about the engineering – it’s also about community. As an industry we need to come to terms with how the need to roll out vast amounts of new transmission will affect those who host the infrastructure. There’s a great deal of work needed to better understand the concerns of these communities, bring them on board and ensure that they’re fairly treated and rewarded,” she says.

“Another important component is ensuring that there’s equitable benefit sharing, so that affected communities get something meaningful back. The benefits to a community need to endure beyond the construction phase into the whole lifecycle of the project.”

WSP’s stakeholder engagement team is working with communities to understand their concerns, including around the issue of energy resilience. Felicity sees a significant role for WSP in helping to counter the prevalence of misinformation in communities where different agendas are being pushed.

“We can support to be a voice of reason. We can look at issues from a factual point of view and help to communicate the trade-offs and pros and cons, the engineering problems and engineering solutions. We can bring correct information that’s easily consumable by regular people without necessarily pushing any particular outcome,” she says.

Learning from other industries and global experience

Felicity says that one of WSP’s advantages in the energy transition is the scale and diversity of its service offerings, enabling ongoing multidisciplinary learning and a holistic view of projects. “For example, our teams have done a lot of work around social performance in mining.” she says. “We can look at how similar approaches could be used in rolling out the energy transition for the benefit of the community. We can also bring our power engineering expertise together with the best of advisory.”

While Australia has some unique energy challenges, much can be learned by looking beyond our shores. “We are able to leverage the expertise of our colleagues in other countries to help shape solutions that suit our context. Offshore wind is a perfect example of where the Australian market will need specialised skills and where the lessons our international colleagues have learned can give us a head start,” she says.

Navigating a turbulent time in Australia’s energy transition

“We are all encountering complex situations and finding ways to navigate through them,” she says. “What makes it fulfilling is doing whatever we can to deliver good outcomes while bringing everyone on the journey. It’s not going to be an easy ride every day, but at the end of it we will look back and it will be so worthwhile.”

At WSP, we’re taking energy evolution forward by accelerating the path to an energy-secure future. It is time to rethink how we plan, design and engineer our places and energy systems. To learn more, contact Felicity Galluzzo.

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