Webinar: Stability Enhancement of Utility-scale Renewable Energy Plants in Weak Grids

Featured Speaker: Behrooz Bahrani, Senior Lecturer and the Director of the Grid Innovation Hub, Monash University About the Webinar: Australia’s power system is undergoing a significant transformation with the retirement of thermal generation and the rapid growth of renewable inverter-based resources (IBRs). This shift has led to system strength-related challenges in several regions of the Australian power system, which are expected to intensify in the future. To enable the widespread deployment of renewable energy resources, particularly in weak parts of the network, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) funded a two-year research project at Monash University in 2020. This webinar provides an overview of the project’s findings and developed solutions, with a specific focus on grid-following and grid-forming inverter control strategies and synchronous condensers. The solutions aim to address the challenges of integrating IBRs into the power system and enable a smoother transition towards a cleaner energy future for Australia.