Australian Scientists Collaborate With Google to Tackle Solar Power Surplus

Solar panels are seen on a roof in Albany, Western Australia, on March 29, 2024. Susan Mortimer/The Epoch Times

Scientists from Australia’s national science agency are collaborating with a secretive Google research and development team to address the solar surplus problem affecting the country’s power grid.

On June 25, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) announced that it had joined with Tapestry, a team from X–the moonshot factory, a separate division of Google, to develop a new type of smart inverter that could assist Australia’s renewable energy transition.

Smart inverters are devices that are commonly used in solar panel installations to help integrate solar energy into the power grid via a range of functions.

At present, Australia has a renewable energy surplus problem as there is more renewable energy available than the power networks can use.

This is because the existing networks were not designed to handle a large amount of energy generated by customers.

Despite this ongoing problem, the Labor government has set targets to achieve 82 percent of renewable energy generation by 2030.

The New Smart Inverters

According to the two organisations, the inverter prototypes have the potential to stabilise electricity grids while allowing them to receive more power from renewable sources such as solar, wind, and hydro.

The new inverters, which are based on technology from an electric car, have a range of new sensors and software, allowing them to communicate with other devices on the grid, such as solar panels and batteries.

In addition, they could manage the flow of renewable energy into a traditional electricity grid, effectively avoiding oversupply and eliminating blackouts.

“Through the world, we’re having trouble where we try to get more and more renewables into the grid and the trouble is the interaction between the old grid and new devices,” Tapestry chief scientist Leo Casey said in comments obtained by AAP.

“The fundamental aim is to get more renewables on the grid but to do it in a way that’s stable, and then we hope that ... this design has a lot of extra smarts that can bring other things to the party.”

CSIRO also said the new inverters could be 50 percent more cost-effective to produce and could deliver an impressive 300 kilomegawatts output, which is equal to the capacity of 164 inverters currently available in the market.

CSIRO principal research scientist Julio Braslavsky said a low-powered version of the smart inverters had been tested, while a trial for the high-power version would start in August.

He noted that if the technology was proven successful, it could allow the power grid to use more renewable energy from rooftop solar panels across Australia.

“One of the targets is to get these inverters to balance the grid in real-time,” Mr. Braslavsky said.

“By being able to distribute this power better, it will mean we reduce congestion and it will enable that power to be used where it’s needed without having to purchase new generators or extra generators.”

The inside of a solar power inverter in Dry Lake Valley, Nevada, on June 28, 2021. Ethan Miller/Getty Images

‘Sun Tax’ for Solar Panel Owners to Take Effect in July

CSIRO’s announcement comes as Ausgrid, an electricity distribution company with around four million customers in New South Wales (NSW), is set to impose a tariff on solar panel owners exporting renewable energy to the grid from July.

The tariff, which was dubbed as “sun tax” by a community solar panel lobby group, will cause Ausgrid customers to be charged 1.2 cents (0.8 U.S. cents) for each kilowatt-hour of electricity they export above a free threshold during the peak export period between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.

Consequently, a customer owning a 5-kilowatt solar system will see their electricity bill increase by $6.60 per year, including $13.30 a year of charges offset by $6.70 of export rebate.

Ausgrid said that the new policy was due to a sharp rise in the amount of solar energy exported by residential and small business customers in recent years, causing its operating costs to increase.

“This tariff encourages customers to consume their own solar power first themselves or time their grid exports to later and keep energy bills lower for everyone across the network in the long term,” it said.

“It ensures that customers who cannot access rooftop solar systems or behind the meter batteries do not shoulder most of the increased costs.”

The tariff prompts objections from Solar Citizens, a consumer group advocating the uptake of solar panels among Australians.

“Households with existing rooftop solar are doing the energy grid a favour by exporting cheap, clean solar that their neighbours can use,” it said.

“We should be removing barriers for more households to go solar, not introducing penalties.

“If these tariffs are designed to encourage battery uptake, then this is a blunt, heavy-handed approach.”

Apart from Ausgrid, Evoenergy and Essential Energy, two other major energy providers in NSW and the Australian Capital Territory, have also proposed a similar tariff to the Australian Energy Regulator.