This report provides an overview of the demand response provided by EnergyAustralia across New South Wales and Victoria for the ARENA Demand Response Trial. The knowledge shared is for the period up to December 2020.
Report extract
EnergyAustralia has continued to progress strongly with the demand response trial in the second half of 2020.
Participation the AT6 event achieved 55MW across mass market, VPP and C&I customers, against a target of 50MW. Whilst this was a test event, the MW curtailed is confirmation electricity customers are able to combine their efforts to collectively support the grid when there is a real need.
In addition to the successful execution of the AT6 event, EnergyAustralia’s most notable achievement during this period, was scaling up from a base of approximately 25,000 customers to over 380,000 subscriptions, with fewer than 20,000 customers unsubscribing or becoming ineligible to participate over that time.
EnergyAustralia ran its first large scale residential BDR event in November with almost 100,000 customers invited to participate. It was also the first time we included an opt out link in the event warning text message to customers, and only 6% of customers invited chose to opt out of participating. We believe customers understand the benefits of participating in these events, not only to themselves, but also to their community and the environment. This is a great outcome, particularly considering that some customers may not have read the preceding emails letting them know about PowerResponse, and therefore their first experience in relation to this program has been the pre-event warning SMS.
In the past six months, EnergyAustralia has also successfully launched the trial of a behavioural demand response product for small business customers, based on the PowerResponse residential product. While we are in the early days of testing, uptake and initial trial results have been positive, demonstrating that customers across all segments are willing and able to contribute to demand response.
Through these continuing BDR programs, and others including battery VPP and C&I initiatives, EnergyAustralia’s participation in the ARENA Demand Response programme will have a significant impact on customer value, and the energy landscape, for years to come.