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Building tomorrow’s power system: The case for transmission
About:
As we move towards a decarbonised future, long-distance transmission is becoming more critical than ever. But how are different regions tackling this challenge? MEI was pleased to host a public lecture with Dr Madeleine McPherson from Canada's University of Victoria who explored the global approaches to inter-regional transmission, comparing strategies from the United States, Europe, Canada and Australia.
Transmission lines connect high-quality renewable resource areas to load centres, lowering the cost of generation. Interconnecting different parts of the power system makes the network more reliable and resilient. Larger transmission networks allow operators to balance power production and consumption between different parts of the country. The benefits of transmission are broadly acknowledged, but building transmission infrastructure proves difficult. Politics, governance, financing and permitting are significant barriers globally. The United States, Europe, Canada and Australia are each tackling these barriers in different ways. This presentation compared the different approaches being taken to tackle inter-regional transmission, identified the winning strategies, and highlighted gaps in each region.
Speaker:
Dr. Madeleine McPherson
Associate Professor Civil Engineering
University of Victoria, Canada
Dr. Madeleine McPherson is an Associate Professor in the department of Civil Engineering at the University of Victoria and the principal investigator of the Sustainable Energy Systems Integration and Transitions (SESIT) Group. She and her team are developing a platform to explore electrification and energy systems integration to co-create decarbonisation pathways. Dr. McPherson serves as an Executive Member on the Energy Modelling Hub, which is convening a national dialog between modellers and stakeholders around decarbonising Canada’s energy system.
Moderator:
Professor Pierluigi Mancarella
Chair Professor of Electrical Power Systems
University of Melbourne
Pierluigi Mancarella obtained his PhD degree in Power Systems from the Politecnico di Torino, Italy, did his post-doc at Imperial College London, UK, and has held visiting research positions at Sintef/NTNU in Norway and NREL in Colorado, as well as visiting professorships at Ecole Centrale de Lille in France, the Universidad de Chile, and Tsinghua University in China.
Pierluigi has been involved in/led, in the last 15 years, some 50 research projects and consultancy and professional activities in the UK, Australia, and internationally, in the area of grid integration of renewables and distributed energy resources, techno-economic modelling of low-carbon power systems, business cases for smart grid technologies, reliability and resilience assessment of future networks, multi-energy systems and sector coupling, and energy infrastructure investment under uncertainty. Pierluigi is author of several books and book chapters, and of over 200 research papers. He is an Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, IEEE Systems Journal, and the brand-new Oxford Open Energy journal. Pierluigi is also an IEEE Power and Energy Society Distinguished Lecturer, the first Chair of the Energy Working Group of the IEEE European Public Policy Initiative, and the Convenor of the Cigre Working Group C6/C2.34 "Flexibility provision from DER". He led the power system security assessment studies commissioned by the "Finkel Review" panel and actively collaborates as a researcher and consultant for industry and government bodies, including AEMO, AEMC and AER.