In August, the Microgrids for Agriculture project team hosted its second community of interest webinar. The “Microgrid Tech: State of the market” webinar explored domestic and international examples of emerging and deployed microgrid technology.

Microgrids Project Officer, Madison Sturgess, interviewed her former colleague, Adam Eberwein, the Technical Lead at EarthSpark International. Adam shared his experiences designing, building, and operating standalone microgrids with rural communities in Haiti over the last 5 and half years. As mentioned in the webinar, Adam has provided the specs for the Les Anglais and Tiburon microgrids.

Project partner, Ashley Bland, then offered a comprehensive project update including:

• a summary of completed smart meter installations,
• progress on dashboard development,
• the design of the real-time modelling tool,
• insights from entry surveys, and;
• lessons learned so far.

CEO of Birdwood Energy, Scott McGregor, closed the webinar with a scan of the domestic market for microgrid developments. He offered assessments on the opportunities, risks, and barriers for demonstrating the attractiveness of microgrids. Scott also offered insights into the types of funding available and the explosive growth potential on the horizon. The Birdwood Energy team are project partners on the Monash University microgrid project.

The main takeaways from the webinar include:

• Internationally, microgrid technology is increasingly sophisticated at solving energy access challenges in developing countries;
• Domestically, the technology and financing for microgrids is ready; regulatory barriers remain but are changing as the energy market continues to transform; and
• The next webinar will look at regulation and another implemented microgrid in regional Australia.

With more than 130 registrations for this webinar, the community of interest for microgrids is growing. In the coming months the project team will prepare webinars that explore the regulatory landscape, identify value stacks, and offer further examples of implemented microgrids. If you know of a guest speaker who would be well suited to one of these topics, please contact Madison madison@qff.org.au.

We thank those who attended past webinars and look forward to announcing our next webinar soon!