VIRTUAL POWER PLANT PILOT
638. Mr R.R. WHITBY to the Minister for Energy:
I refer to the McGowan government's
$5.5 billion state recovery plan that includes significant investments in solar
power projects. Can the minister explain
what this government's virtual power plant pilot means to schools,
including Baldivis Secondary College?
Mr W.J.
JOHNSTON replied:
I appreciate the question from the
member, who is constantly requesting additional renewable energy infrastructure
in his electorate. I am pleased that I have been able, with the McGowan
government, as part of the $5.5 billion recovery program, to deliver and
provide Baldivis Secondary College with a virtual power plant.
The energy system is changing
rapidly, and the government of Western Australia is getting ready for that
change. One of those changes is that energy
is now being created across the network, rather than just in individual,
large-scale power stations. We need
to harness energy that is produced from these distributed resources, and one
way to do that is through a virtual power plant. What Synergy and
the Department of Education is doing is to provide a trial for 10 schools across the south west interconnected system,
including the Baldivis senior high school, the Kalgoorlie–Boulder Community High School and a range of others. They
are harnessing the solar panels and batteries so that these distributed energy resources can be harnessed together to
provide services to the system and not just lower cost power to the schools.
The benefit to the schools is that they can save on their electricity bill, the
benefit to Synergy is that it is part of its new future as a distributed energy
resource manager, and the benefit to the community is that we are allowing a higher
intake of renewable energy, driving out carbon emissions and making real
opportunities for our future.
I
just want to let you know, Mr Speaker, that 34 per cent of the installed
capacity in the south west system is now renewable energy; in 2019–20,
21 per cent of SWIS generation was from renewable sources. At the moment, one
house in every three has solar panels, and we expect that to rise in the next
10 years to one house in two. We are responding to that. We have rolled out
community batteries across the south west system, and that will continue into the future. We are delivering standalone
power systems to the edge of grid, and now we are doing virtual power
plants on schools. This will also allow school students to learn about the
technology that is being installed. Synergy will work with those schools to
ensure that there is a STEM component so that science, technology, engineering
and mathematics can be supported at those schools so that students understand
the benefits that they are getting from the renewable energy and get themselves
ready for jobs in the future.
I want to finish by saying that it
is not just the south west of the state; there are also 500 houses from the
Department of Communities that will be included in a virtual power plant trial
by Synergy as part of the recovery from COVID. It is not just the south west of
the state. Horizon Power is also rolling out community batteries, standalone
power systems and microgrids across regional Western Australia to make sure
that the benefits of renewable energy are shared right across our community.
This is an exciting time, because Western
Australia is at the leading edge of the development of these technologies. Many
of these technologies are not being delivered to us from other parts of the
world, but rather being produced here in Western Australia by skilled Western Australian
workers. The technologies that are being developed are unique to Western Australia
and can now be sold around the world to benefit all of us here in WA.