Glossary

ARE­NA The Aus­tralian Renew­able Ener­gy Agency is an organ­i­sa­tion ded­i­cat­ed to the accel­er­a­tion of Australia’s shift to afford­able and reli­able renew­able ener­gy. It is a statu­to­ry agency, estab­lished by the ARE­NA Act 2011

Bush­light A project run by the Cen­tre for Appro­pri­ate Tech­nol­o­gy between 2002 and 2013, with a phi­los­o­phy based around reli­able and afford­able pow­er enabling com­mu­ni­ty liveli­hood oppor­tu­ni­ties. Bush­light rolled out more than 130 renew­able ener­gy sys­tems across remote NT, WA and Queens­land, typ­i­cal­ly to small out­sta­tions. It dif­fers from SET­uP in scale.

Fre­quen­cy con­trol The response to changes in a pow­er sys­tem, to pro­vide a con­sis­tent flow of electricity. 

Future Ener­gy The sources, tech­nol­o­gy, infra­struc­ture and sys­tems required to meet ener­gy needs in a sus­tain­able way. Future ener­gy also encom­pass­es enabling tech­nolo­gies (such as bat­tery stor­age) that are nec­es­sary com­po­nents of sus­tain­able ener­gy systems. 

The future of ener­gy in the North­ern Ter­ri­to­ry includes inno­v­a­tive approach­es to using gaseous fields like hydro­gen and while Intyal­heme will keep a close eye on emerg­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties in this field, solar pho­to­voltaics remains the most viable renew­able ener­gy tech­nol­o­gy for the North­ern Ter­ri­to­ry. As such, Intyal­he­me’s ini­tial focus is sup­port­ing the NT Government’s 50% renew­able ener­gy by 2030 tar­get through pro­mot­ing solar ener­gy and enabling technologies. 

Iner­tia A basic con­cept of physics which describes how an object will keep mov­ing unless a force, like fric­tion, caus­es it to stop. In pow­er sys­tems, pow­er sta­tions with rotat­ing gen­er­a­tors have iner­tia because their tur­bine gen­er­a­tors con­tain large quan­ti­ties of spin­ning met­al. Solar pho­to­volta­ic pan­els have no mov­ing parts and there­fore lack iner­tia. Iner­tia in the pow­er sys­tem is impor­tant because it pro­vides the sta­bil­i­ty to ensure volt­age and fre­quen­cy remain with­in accept­able lim­its. It also pro­vides ener­gy, when need­ed, to oper­ate pro­tec­tion devices with­in the net­work. Low iner­tia and fluc­tu­at­ing ener­gy input can result in blackouts. 

Low fault cur­rent A fault cur­rent insuf­fi­cient to trig­ger pro­tec­tion devices. 

Nation­al Elec­tric­i­ty Mar­ket (NEM) A whole­sale spot mar­ket, inter­con­nect­ing five region­al areas: Queens­land, NSW and the ACT, Vic­to­ria, South Aus­tralia and Tas­ma­nia. WA and the NT are not con­nect­ed to the NEM

SET­uP The NT Solar Ener­gy Trans­for­ma­tion Pro­gram is a $59m project to trans­form the way pow­er is deliv­ered in remote com­mu­ni­ties. Pow­er and Water Cor­po­ra­tion installed solar sys­tems at 25 loca­tions, to com­ple­ment exist­ing diesel generation. 

Solar Cities A demon­stra­tion pro­gram involv­ing sev­en areas, designed to pro­mote solar pow­er and ener­gy con­ser­va­tion. Alice Springs was a solar city between 2008 and 2013

Spin­ning reserve Gen­er­a­tion capac­i­ty that is online but not being used, and can respond to sud­den changes in the net­work, to main­tain sys­tem frequency. 

Syn­chro­nous con­denser A unit that can spin freely, and adjust con­di­tions on the elec­tric­i­ty grid by either gen­er­at­ing or absorb­ing power. 

Sys­tem strength The mea­sure of the sta­bil­i­ty of a pow­er sys­tem under all rea­son­ably pos­si­ble oper­at­ing conditions.