“Amazing” rooftop solar an opportunity, not a problem, says WA energy minister

Western Australia’s energy minister has described the huge amount of rooftop solar systems installed on homes and businesses as one the state’s most promising and “leading edge” assets, as it transitions its  grid to net-zero emissions by 2050.

Speaking at the opening of the Energy and Mines Australia virtual summit on Tuesday morning, Bill Johnston welcomed the resources industry’s progress on integrating renewables at remote mine sites traditionally powered by diesel, which he described as “some of the most expensive electricity in the world.”

“We believe there’s many opportunities to integrate existing renewable technologies, and we want to make sure that we continue to be at the leading edge of the next wave of innovation,” Johnston told the conference.

But the Labor energy minister added that “one of the most amazing things” about Western Australia was actually its rooftop solar uptake, which has been creating headlines for years now, including back in 2016 when Curtin University described it as the equivalent to the state’s largest power generating unit.

At one point in mid-March this year, rooftop solar supplied a record 65.2 per cent share of the power on Western Australia’s main grid, known as the South West Integrated System (SWIS), when the output totalled 1,250MW on a sunny Saturday.

“We have 1.3GW of rooftop solar and so the trick for us is to integrate that and … get the most value out of those mum-and-dad investments,” Johnston said on Tuesday.

“Other people see it as a problem, we see it as an opportunity, and so we really want to unlock that value.”

On that front, Johnston pointed to what he described as one of “the most exciting projects we have here in Western Australia” – a state government-backed push to integrate and coordinate all of the state’s behind-the-meter resources, dubbed Project Symphony.

As RenewEconomy reported in February, the aim of Project Symphony’s $35 million pilot program is to pave the way for a grid in which virtual power plants are a standard, common and well-regulated source of power and grid services for the state’s standalone electricity network.

The Australian Energy Market Operator is involved in the program, as are the state-owned power companies, grid operator Western Power and generator-retailer Synergy.

“We’re going to integrate all the technologies of behind the meter, whether that’s batteries or rooftop solar or energy consumption, to see whether we can create real value-added investment by families into the electricity system,” Johnston told the virtual summit.

“And that will put us at the leading edge of technological development for grids in the world,” he added.