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SA Power Networks is required to prune trees around powerlines to maintain legislated clearances to ensure community safety. A lot of this pruning involves legacy trees – large trees planted inappropriately under power lines over time. This has resulted in escalating costs of pruning which is passed on to electricity consumers. Legislation relating to the planting of appropriate species of vegetation around electricity infrastructure has been in place since 1988.

We have been working with our Arborist Reference Group and LGA Working Group to develop a long-term approach for ensuring appropriate species selection under powerlines - in order to avoid a legacy of inappropriate vegetation requiring ongoing pruning, at a direct cost to electricity customers.

A number of Local Government Forums were held across the state in March and April to discuss our approach to identifying inappropriate species and ensure a collaborative approach between Councils and SA Power networks is undertaken.

SA Power Networks is partnering with a number of Councils – District Council of Mount Barker, Town of Walkerville and City of Whyalla – to undertake a number of street tree planting trials of species suitable for planting under powerlines.

An Advisory Committee has been established to develop a long-term strategy for appropriate species selection. Membership includes representatives from Green Adelaide, Treenet, the Local Government Association, the Office of the Technical Regulator, SA Water, the Botanic Gardens, Adelaide University, the nursery industry and SA Power Networks.

Kelvin Trimper from SA Power Network’s Arborist Reference Group and Green Adelaide Board, as well as the recently appointed Chair of the new Advisory Committee said

“It is important for Councils, utilities and the nursery industry to be working together to ensure species planted under powerlines deliver good visual and environmental amenity whilst reducing the need for ongoing pruning. If we get it right now we can help keep a lid on the long term costs of pruning for future generations, while continuing to green our town environments.”

By Mark Vincent, GM Strategy & Transformation, SA Power Networks

SA Power Networks has a multi-pronged approach to support the continued growth of renewable energy sources connecting to the SA electricity distribution network.

We believe that our network can play a key role in SA's transition to a decarbonised energy future. Without a network we can’t share the energy we produce, whether that is generated on the roofs of homes and businesses or from wind farms and large-scale solar or whatever source.

We want that future to become a reality.

Flexible exports – an exciting option that we think will become a standard offering across Australia - is not the only initiative being undertaken by SA Power Networks to help support this transition.

Our initial goal is to double the amount of solar connected to the SA distribution network by 2025. We see customers as partners in achieving this goal.

Double solar on our network

To encourage a shift in demand to the middle of the day, SA Power Networks has introduced a solar sponge tariff (network tariffs 25% of peak charge) and is encouraging retailers to move hot water and other demand such as pool pumps.

"Our initial goal is to double the amount of solar
connected to the SA distribution network by 2025.
We see customers as partners in achieving this goal."

We also have upgraded voltage management at 130 substations serving about 790,000 customers to allow real time management of voltages in the middle of the day (lower voltages) and during the evening peak (higher voltage required). This is a highly cost-efficient step that facilitates more exports and tackles the challenge of high voltages when we have significant exports and low demand in localised parts of the network.

Smart solutions

Flexible exports provide a smart solution to managing network capacity and solar generation in real time rather than a blunt low fixed limit in constrained areas. Effectively, flexible exports create an opportunity for greater partnering between customers and SA Power Networks as network manager, as they open up the opportunity for even more active participation of customers in our energy system.

In the longer-term, we anticipate there will be more clarity in the electricity rules for assessing investment in capacity upgrades to support solar. This is likely to be seen in network proposals to the Regulator in coming years.

Many of the initiatives now underway are highly cost effective and we believe crucial to ensuring the continued success of our energy transition. In the longer term, we look forward to the challenges and opportunities of integrating electric vehicles and facilitating the decarbonisation of transport as well as energy.

It's just one of the ways we are Empowering South Australia.

Learn more on our website’s Flexible Exports page.

Adelaide’s north eastern suburbs have borne the brunt of a recent surge in the night-time activities of Adelaide’s Grey-headed Flying-fox (bat) colony.

There have been more than 25 longer-duration outages involving bats in the first two months of 2021. People are also experiencing short ‘momentary’ outages as equipment reconnects power if the animal falls clear after contacting our infrastructure.

We understand this is frustrating, but unfortunately there is no magic solution to deal with the issue.

The bats, are a protected species and among the world’s largest bats, with a wingspan of up to one metre. They have established a permanent and growing colony in Botanic Park near the Adelaide Zoo with their numbers now exceeding 25,000.

The bats are most active at night when looking for food (nectar, pollen and fruit) and fly over a significant range covering much of metropolitan Adelaide and the nearby horticultural areas.

Most recently, residents in areas in the north-eastern suburbs such as Klemzig, Windsor Gardens, Gilberton, Rostrevor and Felixstow have experienced power outages in the early hours of morning.

The bats cause a power outage when they contact power lines and equipment at the top of Stobie poles including powerlines, lightning surge arrestors, transformer bushings and switching equipment.

With a typical spacing of between half a metre and one metre between powerlines, it’s easy to understand why the bats with a wingspan of up to one metre can become entangled.

The random nature of outages involving bats makes it difficult to eliminate or minimise their occurrence. However, installation of animal guards and insulation of some overhead equipment where repeat outages occur, plus a program of “sectionalising” lines has helped reduce some of the impact.

We are working with the Department of Environment, Fauna Rescue and Bat Rescue SA to find solutions and ensure that the injured bats are treated humanely and cared for. They are a protected native species that (like bees) perform important environmental services like pollinating plants/crops.

SA Power Networks has discussed the problem with other electricity distribution companies in Australia and various animal experts, but no-one has a viable solution that we can implement cost efficiently.

In short, we are open to ideas that might help reduce injury for these animals and minimise their impact on electricity supply.

Contact us

On Wednesday 24 February, Andrew Nance, Customer Consultative Panel (CCP) Chair and Karina Ewer, CCP member and CEO of Streaky Bay Council, supported by SA Power Networks staff, hosted a focus group with local government representatives on the power supply to the Eyre Peninsula. Approximately 35 local government leaders from across the region attended. The focus session enabled the CCP representatives and SA Power Networks' staff an opportunity to better understand the energy needs of the local Eyre Peninsula community.

The group was pleased to have the opportunity to provide feedback and expressed their thanks for the recent upgrade of the 33kV line supplying Port Lincoln, which now means that the core township of Port Lincoln can avoid disconnection if we do need to disconnect other parts of the EP for bushfire risk management purposes in the future.

The key issue identified during the Forum was worst served customers on the peninsula from a customer reliability perspective. Representatives of SA Power Networks highlighted that that $4M of the $15M reliability improvement program over 2020-25 has been earmarked for worst served customers on the Eyre Peninsula.

SA Power Networks also received really positive feedback on the work the local Depot Staff did for the Pt Lincoln Christmas lights and decorations last year.

Watch out for our latest effort to put electrical safety in front of our community. A City-Bay tram has been dressed up and taking our safety message to the streets for the next three months.

Learn more about what to do to keep safe around wires down.

SA Power Networks has won the Best Use of Technology Award at the 2020 Digital Utility Awards for its Virtual Power Plant (VPP) project - making us the winner of the digital award three years in a row.

The project also was recently named as the winner of Energy Networks Australia’s prestigious 2020 Industry Innovation Award.

The Best Use of Technology Award recognises technology that is original, radically simplifies or improves an existing network and/or systems, is implemented to its fullest potential, has a long-term vision and is cost-effective and sustainable.

SA Power Networks worked with Tesla, CSIRO and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) in a world-first trial to provide a real-time data feed of available local network capacity to the VPP, enabling it to export more energy to the market but operate within the technical limits of the network.

The project also leveraged SA Power Networks’ partnership with Microsoft to integrate the Azure platform. This was a key element of the digital award submission, focusing on how SA Power Networks had integrated Azure components to achieve this solution through an Agile, adaptive delivery approach.

“The combined Network and IT team can be very proud of this achievement. The VPP is a world-first project in an area of growing global interest and this win confirms that we – and South Australia – are on the cutting edge,” said GM Strategy and Transformation, Mark Vincent.

“The project is extremely timely, as investment in solar and battery technology grows in South Australia.

“Combining this with other initiatives, we anticipate we can double the amount of solar (from 1.5GW to 3.0GW) we can host on our grid by 2025,” Mr Vincent said.

Naturally, SA Power Networks GM Information and Technology, Chris Ford, is thrilled by the digital award.

“To win this award three years in a row and be named Digital Utility of the Year – Energy last year, is an incredible achievement and shows how we’re leading the way in innovative use of technology to support our business now and into the future,” Chris said.

A trial involving SA Power Networks and Tesla that has established a blueprint for integrating energy generated by customers on the national grid, has won a prestigious industry award.

Energy Networks Australia has announced SA Power Networks as the winner of the 2020 Industry Innovation Award for its Advanced Virtual Power Plant (VPP) Grid Integration Trial.

VPPs aggregate large numbers of customer batteries to operate in much the same way as a traditional power station. They are an emerging part of Australia's rapidly changing energy mix and as they scale up in size, orchestration of their interaction with the grid is essential, particularly as large and unco-ordinated surges in energy demand or exports from VPPs have real potential to create grid instability.

In the trial, SA Power Networks worked with Tesla and other industry stakeholders, to design a suitable nationally-supported interface and communication framework, connection agreements and business rules to allow Tesla’s South Australian VPP and the network to share information and work together.

The project enabled higher levels of energy exports to the grid from customer systems in the VPP through implementation of flexible, rather than fixed, export limits and it also provided Tesla the opportunity to provide important network support services such as frequency control.

“Through application of this technology, the power output of Telsa’s proposed 50,000 battery VPP will be able to be doubled compared with traditional approaches to grid integration,” said Mark Vincent, Manager Strategy & Transformation at SA Power Networks.

“It has the potential to increase its ultimate capacity to 500 MW – the same capacity as the now decommissioned coal-fired Port Augusta (Northern) Power Station – and supporting up to one third of typical South Australian electricity demand.”

Energy Networks Australia CEO, Andrew Dillon, said the project demonstrated SA Power Networks’ understanding of the immense change the energy sector was undergoing and the economic and social need to create smarter energy grids.

“This is an important project not just for South Australia but for the nation as we work to integrate increasing amounts of distributed energy into the electricity system,” Mr Dillon said.

“The learnings from this ambitious project will contribute to the development of smarter grids and better customer outcomes across the country.”

Accepting the Award on behalf of SA Power Networks, Mr Vincent said: “Our next step is developing a flexible exports option for individual customers to maximise their export capacity as well as the groups of customers managed within VPPs. We are aiming to make this wider offering available to all solar customers in South Australia in 2022.

“This delivers a step change in terms of integrating renewables with the grid and we anticipate the work we are doing is creating the blueprint for a national approach to integration of DER. Our approach has the support of the solar industry, equipment manufacturers, networks, system managers and policy makers,” Mr Vincent said.

Solar customers in South Australia and Victoria will soon be able to feed more energy into the grid thanks to a new project announced today by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).

ARENA has announced $2.09 million in funding to a consortium led by SA Power Networks to trial a new approach to integrating rooftop solar with the grid, using smart inverters.

Distributors SA Power Networks and Victorian-based AusNet Services have partnered with industry-leading inverter manufacturers, Fronius, SMA, and SolarEdge, and energy management software company SwitchDin to develop the technical capability needed to offer customers flexible rather than fixed export limits for solar.

The $4.84 million project will develop and test end-to-end technical capability to enable flexible export limits for solar PV systems. The capability will be built into Australian products from market-leading inverter manufacturers and will be enabled in many other inverter brands through SwitchDin’s Droplet gateway device.

Read the full media release here..

Outdoors Indoors recently featured a story on our Employee Foundation working with Backpacks 4 SA Kids INC.

Backpacks for SA Kids provide colourful backpacks filled with essential items, toys and learning resources such as books, to children who are displaced or removed from their homes, often under difficult circumstances.

Watch the segment and find out how the Employee Foundation and staff volunteers have been helping to improve warehouse facilities, refine processes, and support at risk children through hands-on, positive contributions.

Do you know how close is too close to a downed powerline? That’s just one question answered by SA Power Networks in a new electricity safety campaign underway as part its ongoing community safety program.

The campaign is informed by detailed research conducted with South Australians, which revealed some significant gaps in their understanding of how to keep safe around powerlines.

“In our research, we commissioned eight focus groups and quantitative research to explore what South Australians knew about electrical safety, particularly around shocks in the home, downed powerlines, traffic incidents involving our infrastructure, and safety on farms,” said Paul Roberts, Manager Corporate Affairs.

“The research showed that while people thought they could use their common sense there was a big gap between what they thought they should do and what would keep them truly safe. For example, there was confusion about safe clearances from downed power lines (keep 10 metres clear) and people were unsure about what to do if they were in a vehicle accident involving Stobie poles and powerlines (stay in the car until help arrives).”

Mr Roberts said many people also were not aware of the danger signals of tingles or shocks from taps in the home.

“Our strategic advertising agency, Nation, has come up with a very simple and elegant campaign based on the research. It is focused on a question/answer format to inform the public about the most basic of safety issues. Based on the concept of ‘what you don’t know can kill you’, the campaign tagline is ‘you’ll be shocked by what you don’t know’. Campaign testing has helped confirm the effectiveness of the approach.

“This is information that could save the unaware from electric shock or even electrocution.”

The campaign is being rolled out through a mix of outdoor billboard and bus advertising; radio; ‘native’, social media and television and will be featured on Outdoors Indoors at 4.30pm on Sunday 18 October.