Digital, distributed & democratic: SwitchDin CEO Andrew Mears on Energy Insiders podcast
SwitchDin CEO Dr Andrew Mears sat down (virtually) to chat with David Leitch of ITK Renewables for RenewEconomy’s Energy Insiders podcast about distributed energy management, smart inverters, and the future of small-scale solar & batteries in the future grid. You can listen to it here or via the embedded SoundCloud box in this article.
2:40: Why SwitchDin exists
“Data and control are key to innovative business models,” says Andrew. Despite Australia being a leader in terms of distributed solar & battery storage uptake, until recently the energy service models have been ‘pretty basic’.
“The mission for SwitchDin is to enable that two-sided marketplace and to fast-track the shift towards a decentralised energy service. And the key problem that we focus on is removing the complexity - making it possible to manage at scale all these small assets owned by different people and coordinating the way they work to deliver value to their owners and to enable smooth interaction with the grid.”
5:00: SwitchDin as a device integrator & fleet aggregator
“At the moment we provide a gateway device and we build into that all the communication protocols - proprietary and other protocols out there - which enables us to pretty well connect & control all the solar and battery systems that are in the market. This is great if you’re trying to build a fleet of connected systems because you don’t have to lock into a single vendor solution and also you’ve got fine-grained control over things like cyber security and communications pathways and all these sorts of things which are important once these things become significant in the electricity system.”
7:45: New inverter standard and the opportunities for orchestrating distributed energy resources
Given the fragmented nature of the industry, “standards haven’t really stuck”. The new inverter standard (AS 4.777) will tighten up the types of performance expectations that will enable distributed systems to better support the grid and enable new opportunities for their owners - supporting the grid and participating in the energy market.
‘Very few’ of the >2.3 million inverter products installed ‘are able to be remotely controlled’. “Part of the value of having some of our add-on devices is that we can retrofit onto many systems this capability.”
“Our focus is on enabling flexible participation of these systems in the electricity system. That’s one of the great things about these new inverters - they can be co-opted to provide these types of services. It’s really just about coordinating this opportunity with the networks and AEMO.”
19:00: The role DER are playing in the energy system
“A fully distributed system would see all these things operating independently and coordinating - and that might be the vision one day, but one step at a time. I think we will be seeing a more hierarchical coordination taking place. The great thing about smart inverter products is that they can handle a lot of that interaction autonomously. But by providing control you can enable new types of services - for example, coordinating lots of solar and battery system to support the operation of a microgrid - to coordinate and balance involves sharing data. Our Droplets can communicate can share data between them to coordinate and manage the balance of generation and demand. This opens up opportunities for community batteries or stand-alone operation with a stand-alone power source. But then in the main grid being able to coordinate lots of systems to provide the sorts of services that have traditionally been provided by larger power stations - enabling smart inverters to manage frequency in the grid by providing injection or sinking energy at the right time - is a service that in aggregate can generate new value.”
“We’re enabling rooftop solar & battery storage to reduce diesel consumption in remote microgrids in Far North Queensland.” [See: Lockhart River case study.]
21:40: DER in retailer VPPs and C&I applications
“In the NEM we’re seeing a number of initiatives - we provide our platform for example, for a large chunk of Simply Energy’s virtual power plant. They’re enabling their customers by enabling their customers to get better pricing on their electricity and they’re creating value by participating in FCAS & spot market opportunities.”
“We’re supporting a number of other VPP opportunities for retailers who are looking for similar sorts of arrangements - and either they’re passing that opportunity through to their customers or they’re using to drive down costs and offer a better deal on their retail electricity.”
“We’re also seeing that in the C&I space, especially with C&I customers where they have a range of different sites. They’re able to take on the job of managing that volatility across their sites with some solar & batteries and they’re using that to get a better deal from their retailer, or in the case that they’re a market participant, helping them to manage some of that volatility for themselves.”
Listen to the full podcast here.