Pacific Island nations have ambitious renewable energy targets, and have been making significant recent progress towards these goals. There are, however, a number of challenges arising, both in serving remote dispersed off-grid end-users, and as variable renewable energy (VRE) penetration levels increase on what are often relatively small grids.
UNSW Institute for Global Development, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency’s Knowledge Sharing Program (Mission Innovation Challenge 2) and Clean Energy Solutions Centre have provided funding for UNSW, USP and partners CSIRO, ITP Renewables and GSES to engage with stakeholders to map out goals and progress towards high RE targets in Pacific Island countries and identify key challenges and opportunities to support the transition from assessment and planning to implementing effective solutions.
With a diverse range of projects, country contexts and challenges, standardization of designs and solutions has been challenging to date, while many capacity building and planning efforts have remained project-based.
The aim of the workshop is to identify and kickstart a set of promising collaborative initiatives for regional approaches, standardisation and scaling up. Particular areas of focus include the following areas:
- Training and Capacity Building
- Grid Integration of RE
- Utility management with high RE penetration
- Role for the Private Sector
- Off-grid access
- EE and other distributed energy resources
- Electrifying transportation
- Opportunities for collaboration and support for such initiatives.
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Source: Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets (CEEM), University of New South Wales (UNSW)
