UNSW wins $6.5m Australia grant to study grid security in renewables shift

Grid-forming storage must interact safely with power system protection.

The University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia has received a $4.62m (AU$6.52m) grant from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) for research into the security of power systems with high proportions of solar, wind, and battery storage.

The three-and-a-half-year project, known as Protection & Relay Operation for Inverter-based Low-inertia Electricity Systems (PROFILES), will examine how grid-forming batteries interact with power system protection systems when providing fault current.

The research comes as more inverter-based resources connect to Australia’s National Electricity Market, creating a need for clearer understanding of how emerging technologies can provide system strength.

“Essentially, we need to keep operating a safe and reliable power system,” said UNSW Sydney Associate Professor in Energy Systems Georgios Konstantinou, who leads the project.

The Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO) Transition Plan for System Security identifies minimum system strength provision from grid-forming battery energy storage systems as an area requiring further evidence, ARENA said.

PROFILES will examine the fault current contributions of inverter-based resources and how power system protection responds to them.

“So, the way that the power is supplied from renewables is fundamentally different to that of traditional coal fired generation,” Konstantinou said. “This work will help to future proof, manage risks and reduce the costs associated with renewable power systems.”

UNSW’s School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications and Real Time Simulations Laboratory will conduct the project, with support from the UNSW Energy Institute.

ARENA said UNSW’s hardware-in-the-loop capability and its independence as a research organisation will support the project’s testing and modelling.

Industry partners include Transgrid, AEMO, ElectraNet, Power Electronics, SMA, Tesla, and Siemens. The project will run until November 2030.

PROFILES will also examine problems and solutions related to inverter-based resources, including solar, wind, and battery storage, their fault current contributions, and power system protection.

(US$1 = AU$1.41)