By Tom Gooch, VP of Commercial, Neara
“The government’s $7.5 million investment to build in-house energy modelling capabilities marks an important step to overcoming the decades-old information silo problem, but overlooks one essential piece of the puzzle: we already have the means to unlock capacity and capitalise on existing infrastructure. We just need to coordinate access to it.
The great irony at the heart of Australia’s AI and energy infrastructure challenge is that the innovative technologies we’re connecting to the grid aren’t being used to optimise the connection process. We’re building the physical backbone of AI using workflows that haven’t changed in decades. There’s an industry transparency problem, not just a capacity problem.
When it comes to the data centre integration challenge, every energy participant is staring at the same issue from a different perspective, using data that no other stakeholder can see. Developers don’t have perfect power certainty at sites because they don’t have visibility to the areas with available network capacity or that will soon be available via planned upgrades.
Networks don’t know how much of their connection request queue is actually viable and committed projects, or how they would interplay as projects get approved. Throughout all of this, the government bodies are working with outdated information from both sides.
The challenge we need to solve now – not in five years – is knowing where the grid has capacity and how to optimally site and sequence massive infrastructure projects wanting to connect to it. Neara’s modelling is already being used across the US and New Zealand to address this exact challenge, and we’ve already identified up to 10GW of latent capacity sitting across NSW’s distribution network.
That’s a significant opportunity to take the guesswork out of Australia’s energy infrastructure roadmap. Unlocking it requires visibility and coordination between developers, networks and governments. These approaches don’t need to be mutually exclusive. Australia’s rising energy demands need solutions now; AI won’t stop to let us catch up.”
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