As Newcastle Herald reporter Matthew Kelly outlined this week, thousands of kilometres of new transmission infrastructure will need to be built across the Hunter Region in the coming decade to connect the growing numbers of renewable energy generation and storage projects to the existing grid.
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Australia's electricity system has been steadily expanded over the years to the point where everywhere except WA and the NT are connected to the National Electricity Market (NEM).
The NEM has its own national regulators, but state governments remain active in the planning and operation of the grid, even if the private sector - bolstered by some hefty subsidies - is expected to do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to new generating capacity.
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The broad thrust of change planned for NSW is set out in a draft network infrastructure strategy published late last year by the NSW Energy Co, a state body nominated as the appointed infrastructure planner for the state's five Renewable Energy Zones (REZs), including one in the Hunter-Central Coast.
As the Herald has been at pains to point out, the generation of electricity through solar panels and wind turbines is the easy part of any program to decarbonise the grid.
The obvious challenge is energy storage - especially beyond the few hours of capacity that mark the limits of even "grid-scale" batteries. But the need to substantially expand and rebuild the high-voltage system is perhaps even more problematic. The difficulties here are more social than technological, given the inevitable property buybacks and other imposts on the public that are entailed in building new high-voltage towers across a well-established landscape.
Even so, this is a situation that governments - and a public that remains largely supportive of the climate-change basis for exiting coal - must grapple with together if things are going to change at their fastest possible pace.
While some of the new infrastructure will be able to track or replace existing high-voltage corridors, the strategy plainly envisages new links, including one between Newcastle and the Central-West Orana REZ centred around Dubbo.
All of this work, and more, will be needed if Australia is to meet Labor's legislated emissions reduction to 43 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.
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