This commercialisation plan explains, at a high level, why the NAC is important to various parties in Australia’s electricity system.
Report extract
Network Aware Coordination (NAC) is an award winning technology, well positioned as the marketplace for Australia’s rapidly growing fleet of Distributed Energy Resources (DER). DER are consumer owned assets which have emerged as the cheapest and most reliable source of ‘peaking’ capacity. Peaking capacity is increasingly important as coal fired generators retire at the same time as intermittent renewables come online. DER is set to play a vital role in keeping our future energy system balanced whilst keeping electricity costs in check. However, it is very important that this ‘consumer power station’ is well integrated with the existing wholesale market and respects the physical limits of the distribution grid.
If DER is not well managed, the system will deteriorate; lowering reliability and increasing costs. The NAC is a superior technological solution integrating DER into our system. CSIRO and ENA found that a well integrated ‘prosumer power station’ will deliver the system a $100 billion benefit over coming decades.
It is no easy task to ensure the consumer power station works well for consumers, their retailers, networks, and our market simultaneously. At the time of writing, four models have been suggested by a process called Open Energy Networks. Each model aims to understand and moderate the future behaviour of DER, whilst exposing them to wholesale market prices. The NAC can play a vital role in any of the four architectures.