This presentation discusses technical and policy issues related to the integration of renewable electricity generation into existing electricity networks in China, Indonesia, Japan, Republic of Korea and, in particular, Australia and India. An understanding of the integration issues and their solutions across Asia-Pacific countries will help these countries in designing appropriate policies to deliver least cost electricity using a combination of both fossil fuel and renewable technologies. While clearly there are technical challenges and costs associated with integrating large scale renewable energy, they appear to be manageable and not yet so significant as to restrict levels of renewable energy development or to compromise the operation of Australia’s or India’s electricity systems. That said, these challenges are projected to increase as renewable energy projects are further deployed, and there will be a need to ensure deployment policy is synchronised or complemented with technical and regulatory support for better grid management.

Dr Arif Syed is Ex-Director of the Research and Analysis Unit, Resources and Energy, Department of Industry, Innovation and Science, Canberra.

For many years, Arif has managed economic policy analysis programs at The Department of Industry, ABARES, Finance, and ATO. Before separating from the Department of Industry in June 2016, for the last five years, he managed the energy and resources policy analyses, particularly the programs such as Australian Energy Projections, Energy Efficiency and Mining Productivity.

He has held many prestigious international scholarships and fellowships such as the Fulbright Scholarship, and Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA; and Italian Government Scholarship, Institute of Economic Development, Naples, Italy. He was also awarded the Department Secretary’s Merit Award in 2013, for playing a ‘leadership role’ in the development of electricity generation technology costing report.

Arif has mostly worked in executive positions with professionalism and probity, action orientation and resilience: either by virtue of managing projects, such as in the Australian Public Service in Australia or the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) project in the United States.

He has had policy analysis, program evaluation, applied economic research and project management experience in various Commonwealth agencies including the Productivity Commission. Arif has published widely over the past several years.