Pacific Island nations have ambitious targets for renewable energy penetration, and have been making significant recent progress towards these goals. There are, however, a number of technical and institutional 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 and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency’s Knowledge Sharing Program (Mission Innovation Challenge 2) have provided funding for UNSW, USP and partners CSIRO, IT Power Australia and GSES (Australian RE companies working in the Pacific) to engage with stakeholders to identify key challenges and needs of Pacific Island nations in reaching high RE penetrations. A workshop is held in conjunction with the Asia-Pacific Solar Energy Research Conference at UNSW Sydney, 4-6th December 2018. The aims of the workshop are to:
- Discuss the challenges and opportunities of introducing more variable renewable energy into small grid and off grid contexts in the Pacific
- Hear from a range of invited speakers regarding the status of VRE integration, key challenges and solutions to facilitate high penetration VRE in small grids and improved off grid energy service delivery
- Identify potential future work to address key issues and themes arising in the discussion
