G-PST/ESIG Web Series: Developing an Engineering Framework to Support Australia’s Energy Transition

Featured Speaker: Christian Schaefer, General Manager, Energy Systems Engineering, Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO)

Christian is an electrical engineer with almost 25 years’ experience building, commissioning and operating transmission networks, thermal power stations and renewable generation. He currently leads the Energy Systems Engineering department at AEMO, providing engineering oversight to the transmission planning and design teams of the Australian National Electricity Market Operator, power system incident root cause analysis, energy system integration analysis, and specialist engineering studies and data management.

Webinar Abstract: Australia is a world leader in the rate of adoption of renewable energy. This webinar will describe AEMO’s proposal for an Engineering Framework to provide an integrated roadmap for the National Electricity Market’s energy transition.

The Engineering Framework seeks to provide an up-to-date foundation regarding emerging power system design and operability needs, as a complement to existing work being progressed across industry, recognizing that in managing the energy transition, no one organization has all the answers. Hence, the Engineering Framework is intended to help stakeholders stay informed of the changing technical needs of the power system, the work underway to meet these changing needs, how the different pieces fit together, and how they can engage on topics of interest. This framework is also needed to structure industry discussions around the prioritization of future work, so that the most urgent issues are addressed first.

The Engineering Framework is structured around the three pillars of: system integration, system attributes and system operability, and describes a number focus areas within these.