Techno-economic Assessment of the Integration of High Renewables into the Australian National Electricity Market

This thesis explores the least cost combination of renewable generation technolo- gies, transmission interconnectors and storage capacity in different supply and de- mand scenarios in the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM) regions. Aus- tralia faced high retail electricity prices due to investment in the electricity distri- bution system, significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions (144% compared to 1990 levels) from electricity sector. In the same time peak demand decreased in most states because of energy conservation, on-site generation and industry evolu- tion. Future plans like reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26% by 2030, use of energy storage (e.g. batteries, concentrated solar thermal power system), increase use of renewables will require a reshape and rethinking of the current energy sys- tem. Although the high renewable penetration system in the NEM regions has been widely discussed, there is lack of co-optimization of the renewable technologies, transmission expansion and storage capacity together. Besides, most studies use historical demand data when optimizing the system, without a detailed assumption of the demand changed by various factors. This study contributes to the current research by building in a depth demand model based on social behaviour, buildings and ambient temperature to analyse the possible changes on demand. A Genetic Algorithm (GA) together with an electric- ity dispatch simulation model at hourly temporal resolution was used in this study. The benefit of this approach consists in co-optimization the renewable generation technologies, transmission interconnectors and storage capacity in the NEM system in different renewable mix and demand scenarios