The future grid is already here
About 2.8 million Australian homes and businesses have rooftop solar installed already. Deploying the right tools will be crucial in ensuring that we can continue to add more - and get the most of it once it’s connected.
You could say that the energy industry had its planets aligned when a resounding positive vibration was delivered to the renewables sector during the same week.
That was the week when the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) announced that homeowners with batteries would be rewarded for supporting the grid and aggregators could use smart inverters and batteries to deliver ‘fast frequency response’; and AEMO’s new incoming CEO said that they would take on the challenge to get Australia’s grid ready to take on 100 percent renewable energy.
Australia’s solar industry has gone through a rollercoaster period where it was all about wholesale pricing, grid constraints, export controls and a news cycle that has been devoted to the ‘solar tax’. The industry felt it had to prove how it could control the growth of rooftop solar while the demand for household, community to utility-scale batteries is starting to take off.
Energy storage has stepped forward to support the expansion of rooftop solar in Australia and regulators such as AEMO and AEMC have recognised this. The new ‘aggregator’ role proposed by AEMC will give battery owners more freedom and clarity on how their assets can add value.
It also opens up new opportunities for the customers of electricity retailers who are home and business owners, where the retailer or a third-party aggregator bids the customer assets for energy market or ancillary services on behalf of these asset owners. These aggregators will need to get the best deal possible while also helping to keep the grid stable and rewarding their customers.
However, getting the grid ready to take on 100 percent renewable energy isn’t just going to be solved by smart inverters and batteries alone. Daniel Westerman, AEMO’s CEO alluded to in his speech, a real-time control room ensures the grid remains operational through the peaks and troughs of renewable generation capacity.
What AEMO sees as a control room to manage grid electricity is a centralised approach in the way a traditional grid needs to be managed. However, the rapid growth in distributed energy resources (DER) calls for an overhaul in the way we should be managing the grid.
This is why SwitchDin has invested in the grid of the future by building our Stormcloud platform and Droplet controllers to provide our customers with the same real-time visibility and management capabilities for their DER from their control rooms - whether they are network service providers, energy retailers, or installers to businesses.
Here is how SwitchDin has built the future grid today through the work we’ve done --
We’ve worked with distribution network service providers such as Horizon Power and Energy Queensland to allow remote communities to operate as microgrids. From remote towns such as Onslow, WA to Birdsville and Bedourie in Queensland, SwitchDin is helping communities formerly dependent primarily on diesel fuel to increase their energy independence with rooftop solar and batteries.
SwitchDin has enabled virtual power plants (VPPs) for major energy retailers such as the Simply Energy VPPx project in South Australia. We’ve proven how powerful batteries can be when they are integrated to support the energy needs of the broader community.
We’re powering shopping malls with rooftop solar and five major shopping centres in Queensland managed by Yurika Energy and QIC Real Estate have reduced their consumption of grid electricity by up to 30 percent thanks to SwitchDin’s Droplets.
SwitchDin is helping a wide range of businesses reduce their carbon footprint by using rooftop solar in a smarter way. For example, with Centennial Coal we’ve reduced their reliance on grid electricity at their mine site, and, for Santos we’ve reduced the need for diesel to operate oil wells in the Cooper Basin.
SwitchDin supports equipment manufacturers for the South Australian Home Battery Scheme, where we’ve partnered with OEM partners such as Fronius and SolaX to make their batteries VPP-ready so they can power South Australia with clean energy. These are just a few examples of the dozens of manufacturers whose equipment we have integrated with to expand functionality and open up opportunities.
By using SwitchDin to provide real-time visibility through monitoring and the ability to manage their DER assets, it shows we don’t have to flick the kill switch on solar when we have control over how much solar energy gets to the grid when it's most needed. It also means we’re reducing our reliance on centrally generated electricity which is what the future grid is all about.
AEMO has said that we must prepare the grid be able to handle 100 percent renewables by 2025.
AEMC has painted a picture on how batteries can be used for demand response and how we can reward households for using their batteries.
What they’ve painted is a picture of the grid of the future - but at SwitchDin, we’ve enabled the future grid to happen now.