CIGRE Australia - The energy transition: Shaping the power systems of tomorrow in Australia
The energy transition in Australia is progressing, but for Australia to meet its carbon emission targets much more needs to happen, and to happen quickly. This is particularly so as the decarbonisation of other sectors of the economy, such as transport and agriculture, require electrification to remove carbon from their operations.
The result of the decarbonisation of the entire economy is that the scale of change in power systems will continue to rapidly accelerate over the coming decades.
CIGRE Australia Chairman Dr Seán Mc Goldrick explains the quantum of the challenge, ‘We have made great progress in decarbonising the existing generation in the power system in Australia, with renewables now a sizeable component of the generation mix. What we have not yet addressed is the incredible challenge of adding around a further six times today’s utility-scale wind and solar, and five times today’s consumer energy resources, over the next 25 years, and designing and operating the power system to manage that with the level of reliability that consumers have come to expect.’
Following its successful international Symposium in Cairns in late 2023, CIGRE Australia is hosting a suite of technical conferences in Adelaide, Australia from 2-4 September 2025 with the overarching theme ‘Shaping the Power Systems of Tomorrow’ to address the challenge.
Open to members and non-members alike, this suite of conferences offers a unique opportunity for power systems experts to explore the various challenges we face in delivering the transition and to learn from each other.
Using the conference model adopted for Cairns, CIGRE Australia will be running a set of conferences and events rather than a single conference, but all held at one location to enable delegates to move freely between the various events and streams.
The suite of events includes the 9th South East Asia Protection, Control and Automation Conference (SEAPAC25), the 6th Conference on Integration of Distributed Energy Resources (CIDER25), a general conference focusing on the energy transition, four tutorials or workshops, a NextGen Power Professionals seminar by CIGRE Australia NGN focusing on early career professional development, a leadership breakfast event hosted by Women in Energy and a gala dinner and other networking events.
An international perspective, applied locally
In many facets of the energy transition Australia is acknowledged as world leading. The penetration of roof-top solar PV remains very high by in Australia compared to international standards meaning we have been exposed to the technical challenges that creates, and we have provided the innovative responses necessary to manage LV and MV power systems under high in-feed conditions.
Each electric power system globally has its own characteristics of course – and as these systems transition there are opportunities to learn about how other countries approach similar challenges. In April this year Spain and Portugal suffered a system black. Since that time, there has been much discussion and speculation on the causes, given that the Spanish system also has a high degree of penetration of renewable generation. One of the workshops at the conference will look at disturbances in Spain and Peru and the learnings that flow from these.
Complementing the workshop on major system disturbances in Spain and Peru, delegates at the event will be able to hear a truly international keynote perspective on the energy transition from CIGRE President Professor Konstantin Papailiou.
Other keynotes include an update on the draft recommendations of the Australian National Electricity Market Wholesale Market Settings Review by review Chair and energy economist Associate Professor Tim Nelson and a forward-looking perspective on the scale and nature of the Australian transition by incoming Australian Energy Markey Operator Executive General Manager of System Design and CIGRE Australia board director Ms Nicola Falcon.
A focus on technical content
Many of the challenges with delivering the energy transition are technical in nature, but most energy conferences are quite general in content. As CIGRE Australia Chief Executive Officer Peter McIntyre says, ‘It is critical that we provide access to high quality technical information to our members and other power system practitioners in Australia. The conferences will be unashamedly technical and absolutely jam packed full of relevant content’.
Some of the major areas of focus will be protection, automation and control, the connection and control of demand side resources, power system technical performance with high renewables penetration and inverter-based equipment, harmonics and power quality, system data and digital twins and the interaction between electricity markets and power systems.
Mr McIntyre continued, ‘With around 170 presentations, tutorials or workshops there is an immense amount of material to be discussed related to delivering the energy transition. There is simply no other conference in Australia of South-East Asia offering this breadth or depth of technical content.’
At the close of early-bird registrations at the end of May, around 700 delegates had already registered for the event, indicating that it is going to be a well-attended set of conferences. The benefit of that for delegates is the breadth of networking that will be possible with industry peers in the electric power industry.
More information of the conferences is available by visiting cigreconference.com.au
For members or delegates intending to travel to Adelaide for this event, the opportunity also exists for the trip to be combined with the Asia-Oceania Regional Council events being held in New Zealand in the days following the Adelaide conferences from 5-7 September. Additional information on the AORC events can be found here.
Thumbnail & banner credit: Manuel Meurisse on Unsplash
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