e-News for power industry leaders

Issue 25 - March 2021

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the first edition for 2021 - now in our 7th year of In the Loop we appreciate the growing subscription and your interest in what is happening in CIGRE, both regionally and globally.

In this issue we have three articles that while from different Study Committee areas, consider some of the issues of the changing and transitioning electricity system.

The first is a summary of a System Strength Reference paper from the C4 Study Committee which followed from the great amount of interest that was shown in last year's online joint AEMO/CIGRE system strength workshop.   (recordings of this workshop are available for free on our You Tube website and have received a large number of views and good feedback).  

The second article discusses the role of Blockchain technology and its potential to significantly enhance energy markets.  Technical Brochure 824  references the potential application of BlockChain to energy markets as well as some of the current Blockchain implementations.

The final technical article in this edition continues the theme of energy transition and looks at how record renewable growth and growing uncertainty are presenting major challenges to optimal investment decisions.

I would also like to draw your attention to our newly released Young Engineers (NGN) Website which has been designed and launched by our young engineers and will focus on the activities and interests of that group within CIGRE.  This will develop into a great resource point for the Young Engineer members and should be a go to site to see what the CIGRE NGN both locally and global are up to - congratulations to those involved, especially to Madeline Binet of AEMO for the great work and co-ordination in pulling this site together  - NGN Website 

Finally, I am very pleased to be able to announce that we have some events coming up that you may be interested in.

After a couple of postponements due to COVID restrictions,  we will be running a standalone CIGRE Transformer Reliability Webinar in May.  The program and registrations for this are available on the event website and given the speaker lineup we are already receiving good feedback on the proposed content.  The webinar is planned to run over three non consecutive days of a few hours each session, so should not impact too greatly on delegates time or other commitments.  Delegates will also receive links to download the session recordings and copies of the presentations.  Have a look here for further information and to Register.

A little bit later in the year we have planned to stage our CIDER (Conference on the Integration of Distributed Energy Resources) as a face-to-face event in Glenelg, Adelaide - 2-3 November.  We are hopeful that the travel and association issues related to COVID are under control by then and delegates will be free to attend and rekindle./develop industry networks and relationships.

The Call for presentations for CIDER has just been released, CLICK HERE to goto the event website to get detail and we would welcome you lodging your interest to present.

To stay up to date with our events and the Centenary Paris Session planned for August 2021 and 2022, please have a look at our website and/or follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn

Thanks again for reading and your support and we look forward to seeing you and your colleagues participating in one of our events soon.

 

Best Regards

Terry Killen 
Chief Executive
CIGRE Australia.

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System Strength Reference Paper

Following the success of a system strength workshop, Study Committee C4 has produced a Reference Paper which was published in the Science and Engineering Journal in February 2021 (Volume 20).  The intent of the reference paper is to promote a common understanding of definitions, problem statements, appropriate solutions, and complementary perspectives relating to system strength.  The authors include a strong Australian contingent led by Babak Badrzadeh and supported by Sachin Goyal, Sorrell Grogan, Andrew Halley, Alan Louis, Tony Morton and Stephen Sproul.


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WG C5.30, “The Application of Blockchain Technology in Power Systems”

Blockchain technology has the potential to enhance energy markets significantly. While there are a number of projects being undertaken globally, including in Australia, they are quite small scale and there is significant development needed before any widespread implementation can be a major disruptive force in this area. Working Group C5.30 has recently produced Technical Brochure 824 on “The Application of Block Chain Technologies in Power Markets" which provides a status report on this technology and its future potential to be a significant enabler of energy markets, particularly in relation to decentralised trading systems.  The Convenor was David Bowker and other members from Australia were Alex Barakat, Bhwana Kapoor, Greg Thorpe, Tim Baker, Victor Francisco and Victor Tan. 


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Working Group C1.39 - Optimal Power System Planning Under Growing Uncertainty

Australia’s energy transition is continuing at an unprecedented rate with record renewable penetration and growing uncertainty in our market systems.  This is also being experienced in other parts of the world and Working Group C1.39 has recently published Technical Brochure 820, which provides a review of this and how it is presenting a major challenge to optimal investment decisions.  The Australian members of the WG were Christian Schaefer, Pierluigi Mancarella and Herath Samarakoon.


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