Summary
GreenSync’s Decentralised Energy Exchange (deX) is a market-enabling digital platform that aims to provide electricity networks with better coordination and control of the increasing volume of distributed energy resources (DER) in the electricity grid. deX also aims to enable consumers to get more value from their energy assets (such as solar, batteries and electric vehicles), by being rewarded for participating in grid services.
Key results
The GreenSync deX Program was a two and half year program that culminated in the realisation of deX as a commercially viable, digital DER integration and management platform. Today deX is a software product that is being used to register, view, control and verify thousands of previously latent DER.
The first year of the deX Program focussed on developing the foundational components of the platform to enable and maximise the DER registration, visibility and control functionality, and to ensure subsequent scaling and complexity could be supported.
Later stages of the project focussed on addressing the challenges of device registration, customer permission, customer churn and network compliance. This resulted in deX reaching an advanced level of maturity, scale and specialisation in 2021.
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How the project works
The Decentralised Energy Exchange (deX) Program is an open access software platform that enables transparent and localised marketplaces to operate. Consumer owned devices registered with deX will be visible to network and market operators and can be contracted for grid services, such as supplying energy during peak demand, managing frequency or grid voltage, and reducing network constraints.
The deX platform consists of three layers:
- deX Connect – Facilitating customer choice and reducing costs by ensuring DER assets and technologies can be registered easily to deX and can communicate efficiently with each other on a cloud-to-cloud basis,
- deX Vision – Assisting Distribution Network Service Providers (DNSPs) and market operators in ensuring electricity supplies are secure by creating a register of DER, visibility of size, type and activity, plus mediation mechanisms,
- deX Markets – Enabling marketplaces by providing a forum in which legitimate parties can exchange digital contracts for DER services in a secure, transparent manner.
Over three years, the deX platform will be scaled up nationally through projects with networks, governments and technology vendors. The result could be a globally scalable software solution that will form the architecture for future flexible, transactive grids.
Area of innovation
deX is a market-enabling digital platform that forms the layer between DER and the grid through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). It aims to allow technology manufacturers and other platform owners to integrate their technology with deX so that consumers can register their DER. Retailers and network operators will then be able to view, coordinate and contract available DER for a variety of energy services.
A technology agnostic platform, deX will be open to all technology providers, networks and retailers. This creates opportunities for further innovation moving towards a transactive grid where services from DER are valued, participation increases, and overall system efficiency and reliability are maintained.
Benefit
deX could provide Australia with a national platform that forms a dynamic register of DER and supports a wide range of DER technologies, virtual power plants and network management systems, to support a flexible grid increasingly powered by renewables.
The platform will allow customers to get more value out of their energy assets by rewarding them for contributing to the grid. Retailers and aggregators will be able to contract capacity for wholesale market opportunities. Networks will gain visibility of behind-the-meter generation, allowing them to forecast more accurately, control DER to dispatch, or contract DER for other grid services, such as voltage and frequency management, in line with dynamic network conditions.
deX will enable higher shares of renewable energy to be connected to the grid while ensuring electricity is secure, reliable and available where and when needed.
Additional impacts
This project is developing Australian clean-tech innovation that can be exported globally to solve similar issues in countries or regions with deregulated energy markets and increasingly high penetration of solar, batteries, electric vehicles and other DER.
The project will deliver significant industry-wide benefits by:
- Increased knowledge and capabilities,
- The creation and publication of a set of consistent approaches (“protocols”) for DER, VPPs and network systems,
- The establishment of consistent approaches for DER contracting,
- The establishment of market-enabling foundational registration, contracting and consent approaches that support consumers, networks and retail value stacking.