"The head of the Australian Energy Market Operator has stressed the continued, rapid build-out of large-scale renewable generation capacity must remains the nation’s top priority, both to drive down energy costs and to get the grid to net-zero emissions.
Speaking at the Australian Energy Week conference in Melbourne on Tuesday, AEMO chief Daniel Westerman said “getting enough energy into the system” is top of the list of things he worries most about.And the cheapest way to do that, he added, is to ramp up the rollout of large-scale solar and wind energy to the tune of a nine-fold increase – from 15GW today to 140GW by 2050 – which is what is being forecast in AEMO’s latest Integrated System Plan.
Alongside this, AEMO says the grid will also need a tripling of “dispatchable firming capacity” – from 20GW today to 60GW by 2050 – which will come from a combination of technologies, including big batteries, pumped hydro energy storage and demand response.“I’ve said this before, that this energy transition is not just about environmental benefits, it is a kaleidoscope of economic, technical, political, and environmental factors,” Westerman said during a plenary address at the conference later on Tuesday.“And these recent weeks have really reminded us about the economic benefit of the transition to low-cost, firmed renewables"
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