Intelligent Storage for Australia’s Grid
- $445k Funded by ARENA
- $930k Total project cost
Summary
The Intelligent Storage for Australia’s Grid project involves piloting GridCredits, a battery storage control module that allows consumers to monitor electricity usage and access their solar power overnight and at peak times.
Reposit will offer the ‘GridCredits System’ to volunteer households in Canberra. The pilot will demonstrate the value of smart storage and also increase the understanding of how residential solar and energy storage systems can operate in Australia’s electricity grid.
The project has the potential to increase the uptake of rooftop solar and may allow more renewable energy to be connected to the grid.
Key results
- The Reposit Power project pioneered the development of distributed control systems to monitor, optimise and control grid-connected energy storage
- Reposit developed game changing software that turns households into energy traders. Solar panels and battery storage at Reposit properties across the country are linked together, and via Reposit software can dispatch excess energy into the electricity grid to stabilise it
- The Reposit controller box talks to the home battery and monitors solar generation to control electricity usage from the grid. As part of the trial, Reposit successfully deployed five full home energy systems, comprising solar, storage and Reposit’s technology. These customers were able to make significant savings on electricity bills, with one customer saving up to $3,000 per annum. These savings were through a combination of solar (for those that did not have it before the trial commenced), solar-charging of the battery, smart-charging of the battery at off-peak times, through market operations and through behavioural change
- Reposit also successfully deployed 12 Reposit Boxes. These were intended to collect data and demonstrate that Reposit’s IT systems could handle larger volumes without the need to deploy storage, which at the time of establishing the Project was very expensive
- The project shared learnings via conference presentations and reports. These covered; acquiring customers, partnering with the solar industry, collection and dissemination of rich data, improved solar shifting, and simultaneous delivery of multiple services from small demand-side storage units.
Learn more
Report: A Commercially Viable Application of Electricity Storage for Australia’s National Electricity Grid
This report details how the Intelligent Storage for Australia’s Grid project plans to pilot GridCredits, a battery storage control module that allows consumers to monitor electricity usage and access their solar power overnight and at peak times.
Media Release: Tesla and Reposit Power Team up With ARENA Supported Storage Solution
Reposit Power has announced it is combining its GridCredits storage system with Tesla’s Powerwall Home Battery.
Media Release: Storage solution to enhance rooftop PV
ARENA announced $445,000 funding for Reposit Power (Reposit) to trial an on-grid solar PV energy storage and trading system.
Need
Residential energy systems are currently expensive and are not yet proven to reduce the total cost of electricity to households. Consumers have the opportunity to maximise their solar consumption and to earn additional revenue trading in wholesale markets with smart storage.
Smart storage can offer grid-stabilisation services that benefit electricity grids by helping to manage the supply of renewable energy. In certain circumstances, smart storage may also be an economically viable alternative to costly network upgrades.
Newly available low-cost battery storage coupled with Reposit’s software means that Reposit Power and partnering organisations are uniquely placed to work with consumers and network service providers to provide smart storage solutions.
Project innovation
Residential electricity storage is currently being installed by early adopters and innovators in the Australian market. Reposit Power plans to use a commercial business model and its GridCredits System to allow customers to get more value from battery storage.
Reposit Power’s GridCredits system is a control module that can be added to storage batteries. It automatically manages the demand profile of a residence whilst simultaneously providing both energy and stabilisation services to the grid. The software manages the dispatch of grid tied storage, ensuring maximum benefits to the electricity system and superior financial returns for system owners.
Benefit
Reposit’s technology will help smooth out the variable delivery of solar energy, allowing more renewables to be connected to the grid. The Intelligent Storage for Australia’s Grid project is also aiming to show how consumers can achieve greater value from their solar systems by selling energy into the grid. This may encourage a greater uptake of rooftop solar.
With the use of the GridCredits System, consumers can monitor their electricity usage and have access to their own power overnight and at peak times, reducing the demand on the Grid. Storage can make electricity systems both cheaper to operate and more reliable for everyone.
Read more about system security and reliability.
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