Planning for Australian Power System Transition under Low-Carbon Policies

Environmental and economic concerns drive Australia’s power system transition to a low-carbon system, which necessitates the adoption of efficient long-term policies. One of the most effective policies is to implement a carbon emission budget, leading to the retirement of coal and gas generation due to their high carbon dioxide emission rates. However, Australia will face an extremely high level of contingency because of a remarkable penetration level of RESs in its system. Since fossil-fuel power plants are the main sources to cover the system’s contingency, the system security will be endangered after the retirement of coal and gas generations. In this context, we propose a near-term planning model to investigate how different decarbonization targets affect the retirement of inertia sources in Australia, which we expect to be replaced by energy storage systems. Furthermore, we calculate the optimal investment strategies for each technology to cover the system’s contingency. Our findings under the drastic decarbonization scenario indicate the necessity of investing 0.36 GW/6.97 GWh in pumped hydro and 13.29 GW/13.57 GWh in battery energy storage systems for Australia’s power system, leading to the retirement of 6.51 GW of coal generation in New South Wales and 5.7 GW in Queensland.