The predictions come in the final version of the Australian Energy Market Operator’s 2022 Integrated System Plan, its roadmap to a rapid transition to a grid dominated by renewables, featuring two-way energy flows and technologies that will draw on cheap, green power rather than coal, gas and oil.
The ISP focuses much of its 600-odd pages – the main report and its appendices – on the monumental planning and development efforts required to accommodate nine times as much large-scale renewable generation capacity and three times as much “firming” capacity on the NEM by 2050.
But AEMO also stresses the huge influence of the generation and feed-in capability of “millions of individual consumer-owned solar PV systems,” not to mention the batteries – either installed as part of the solar system or parked in driveways as part of an electric vehicle – that are expected to be added to them.
