When: Wednesday 20th May 2020, 7:00 pm AEST (Melbourne time). You’ll be able to ‘check in’ from 6:50pm.
Where: Online webinar using ‘Zoom’ (relocated due to COVID-19). If you haven’t used Zoom before use this link to test your setup. You will need to get a ticket using the link below.
Tickets:
- You will receive the necessary web link for the webinar from the ticketing system.
- We have a capacity of 500 people.
- We have incurred some additional costs in hosting the webinars. You will see a large number of free tickets available and a smaller number of paid tickets should you wish to help us to meet the webinar costs.
- Renew depends on the generosity of our community to continue its valuable work. We would welcome your donation here: renew.org.au/donate or via the additional donation option when choosing your ticket.
- Click HERE to get a ticket for the webinar.
Presentation: We often hear that renewables have become the cheapest option for electricity generation. However, they’re not yet being constructed quickly enough to rapidly decarbonise our economy. Supporting infrastructure such as large-scale energy storage and transmission lines hasn’t even really started. Recently, some investors in wind and solar farms have suffered unexpected losses in revenue. So what’s going on?
This webinar will explore the obstacles preventing Australia’s main electricity grid from quickly transitioning to renewable energy (as discussed in Andrew’s discussion paper on the same subject). It will briefly review the latest work from the Australian Energy Market Operator confirming that the cheapest option to replace ageing coal-fired power stations is wind and solar backed up by energy storage and transmission. Key projects such as Snowy Hydro 2.0 will be discussed.
We will then examine the main obstacle to transition, which is an outdated electricity market. Finally, it will explore potential ways to overcome it.
Speaker: Andrew Reddaway is an Energy Analyst at Renew. Prior to joining the ATA in 2013, Andrew worked at the Australian Energy Market Operator where he developed the organisation’s first forecast of rooftop solar generation for the National Electricity Market.
At Renew he has authored a range of discussion papers and articles including a series on the transition of Australia’s electricity grid. Andrew has a bachelor of engineering, was accredited by the CEC as a solar system designer and is also experienced in hands-on design and installation of small off-grid solar solutions. Andrew designed and developed Renew’s free Sunulator program, used in many ATA research and consulting projects and household advice consultations.
You can view the video of this presentation here.
Chris Moss, Rob Gardner, Rick Molloy, and Peter Wonfor, Melbourne branch committee.
* We recognise and appreciate the assistance of the University of Melbourne Energy Transition Hub in providing the venue for our normal events. we look forward to resuming physical meetings in the future.