About Smart Grid Australia
Smart Grid Australia Membership
Backgrounder - addressing energy & climate change
What is Smart Grid Australia?
- A vision for the electric system of the future – based on sound technical, operational and environmental principles.
- A national initiative to help address the environmental issues in relation to the power industry and make that vision a reality by transforming the infrastructure, technologies and the market.
- An alliance to move that initiative forward, to join voices in favour of a fully modern intelligent electric system.
- An opportunity to participate in an important new market that will revolutionise how electricity is produced, delivered, and used.
Industry Alliance
Smart Grid Australia is a non-profit, non-partisan alliance dedicated to an enhanced, modernised electric system. This alliance holds meetings, organises committees, assists with government initiatives, and issues communications to accelerate progress. It can be an important source of ideas, inspiration, and influence for any organisation interested in this burgeoning sector.
Smart Grid Australia is a breakthrough strategy for transforming the nation’s electric power grid with advanced communications, automated controls, and other forms of information technology. This new grid will incorporate such things as:
- Intelligent communications networks
- Digital sensors and controls for remote monitoring and operation
- Tools for grid planning, design and operation to simulate, plan and automate complex transmission and distribution operations
- Better ways to connect next-generation equipment such as advanced storage, improved transformers, and superconducting wires
- Advanced meters to collect usage data electronically and automatically
- Load management/demand response technologies that help reduce peaks in electric demand and thereby reduce the need for standby power plants
- Smart devices ranging from motors to HVAC systems (heating, ventilating, and air conditioning) to home appliances with embedded intelligence which will empower end-users to actively participate in this process.
Smart Grid Australia - Membership
Smart Grid Australia is a meeting ground for different constituencies, and, therefore, a forum for important and necessary dialogs that might otherwise not occur. The stake-holder groups include:
- Electric utilities committed to higher reliability and lower costs
- Telcos building intelligent communications networks
- Vendors selling the equipment, software, and services that sup-port the electric power system
- Energy investors seeking to understand where the market is headed and where the opportunities lie
- Federal, state, and municipal agencies who over-see the electric power system
- Research organisations building the technologies of tomorrow
- Non-profit organisations com-mitted to a cleaner, safer, more efficient energy future.
- Within Smart Grid Australia there are workgroups involved in various activities. These operate on a ‘needs’ basis and can include both full members and affiliate members.
For an overview of current members click here: SGA Members
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Backgrounder - addressing energy & climate change
Electricity generation is the single largest contributor to global CO2 emissions (according to the ‘World Energy Council’ roughly twice as much as the other major fossil fuel burner, transportation), but also offers the greatest potential for reducing such emissions in the short and medium term.
Today’s energy and utility industry is facing unprecedented changes being driven by multiple societal and industry issues. These include: the aging of transmission and distribution network infrastructure in developed economies and the rapid infrastructure build-out in emerging economies; environmental policies driving the need to better manage demand and current assets; the aging workforce, resulting in loss of corporate knowledge; increasing pressure on reliability and power quality to support today's digital economy; and heightened focus on the use of capital and operating funds by investors, markets, and regulators. As a result, these drivers are requiring utilities to adopt a new level of enterprise aggregation, integration and use of real and near real-time data from operational systems, as well as traditional sources of data from back office business processes.
Major innovations and advanced technologies available today can radically transform the ability of consumers and enterprises to find, produce, deliver, and use energy in a more cost-effective, resource efficient and environmentally sustainable way.
Alternative energy sources like solar, wind, hydrogen fuel cells, clean batteries, as well as mobile battery or hydrogen powered cars, will become the distributed sources of energy in the future and will require the current analog grid to become IP enabled, much like the telephone and internet industries have developed.
Smart grids or network intelligence are a way to reduce CO2 emissions and connect the distributed/clean generation sources like solar, wind and bio.
Smart grids or network intelligence enables real-time operational intelligence, connectivity and observability further down into the grid and across the electricity supply chain. This approach leverages network automation and analytics in conjunction with grid data devices such as smart meters provides further benefits to both utilities and consumers. Sensors and automated monitoring mean fewer outages and faster restoration. Optimized transmission of power can shorten transmission paths and reduce losses, which lowers overall generation needs – all of which amounts to lower GHG emissions. A more sophisticated network also enables new products and services that take advantage of real-time consumer information and two-way interaction as these become available.
In the 21st Century, bringing intelligence and advanced technology into the grid is integral to the continued growth of national GDP and the ability to provide optimum levels of reliability and efficient energy, whilst maintaining competitive ecological demands.
The Australian government’s commitment to climate change is real - from ratification of Kyoto, CO2 reduction targets and a 20 per cent Renewable Energy Target. By partnering and collaborating Australian government, distributors, industry and regulators can work together to develop an efficient energy industry, reduce emissions and even become a leader in the fast-growing technologies and industries that will enable economies to reduce their carbon emissions.