Decision-useful observability for inverter-dominated electricity systems: framework development and Australian applications

Increasing penetration of inverter-based resources is increasing electricity-system dependence on information that extends beyond conventional physical-state observability. This study develops the Decision-Useful Observability Index (DUOI) to assess whether information is adequate for a specified planning, operational or governance decision across six dimensions: technical, data, operational, economic, consumer-risk and adaptive-governance capability. The framework is applied to six Australian electricity-sector applications using publicly available technical, planning and regulatory evidence. An indicator-level evidence-to-score audit produces dimension scores ranging from approximately 0.45 to 0.88 and equal-weight additive DUOI scores from approximately 0.56 to 0.72, demonstrating uneven information capability across applications and dimensions. Since the six-factor product is intrinsically scale-compressed, multiplicative scores are not directly compared with additive scores; bottlenecks are instead identified from the minimum dimension score and interpreted alongside the dimension profiles and scale-comparable geometric mean. The applications show that the dimension most closely associated with an application’s purpose is not necessarily its principal information bottleneck, and that information can be available yet remain decision-inadequate owing to the limitations in timeliness, accessibility, interoperability, attribution or institutional feedback. Therefore, DUOI extends observability from physical-state measurement to decision-specific information capability and provides an auditable basis for tracing documentary evidence through indicator-level scoring to dimension-level diagnosis and targeted improvements in information infrastructure and governance.