SA Power Networks – Electrification and Demand Flexibility
- $6.22m Funded by ARENA
- $13.83m Total project cost
Summary
The project will recruit a minimum of 500 households in South Australia to demonstrate the customer and industry benefits of demand flexibility and smart electric homes and identify levers to support their deployment at scale.
Need
Australian households are progressively electrifying their homes through the adopting electric vehicles and installing a range of electric appliances and Consumer Energy Resources. This is expected to result in South Australia’s distribution network carrying up to twice the amount of electricity by 2050 than it does today. If left unmanaged, this could significantly increase peak demand on the distribution network, driving a high level of investment in network upgrades.
New demand-side flexibility technology enables customers to better optimise their in-home energy use, while supporting the needs of the network at times network constraint. By making use of the network’s existing capacity more flexibly, we can reduce the amount of additional generation, network and storage capacity needed to meet growing this demand. In turn, this will put downward pressure on energy prices for all customers.
Action
The project will recruit a minimum of 500 households by incentivising them to electrify certain appliances in their homes and enable them to optimise their energy use through the provision of a Home Energy Management System (HEMS). The HEMS will facilitate behind-the-meter demand flexibility in response to consumer preferences, retail offers, network signals and market conditions. Participating households will join an 18-month research program that will help demonstrate the value of household electrification and demand flexibility and identify the requirements to deploy energy-smart homes at scale. The research program will be holistic, investigating not just technical and policy/regulatory barriers but also customer barriers to adoption, rewards and expectations for the technology.
Outcome
The objectives for the Project will be achieved through the following Outcomes:
- increasing the value delivered by renewable energy through the optimisation and orchestration of electric appliances and existing renewable assets in residential homes;
- demonstrating of the value of energy-smart homes in terms of customer savings, network savings and commercial opportunities;
- accelerating the establishment of national behind-the-meter interoperability standards and adoption by industry;
- enabling scale up of energy-smart homes through the demonstration of technology, new energy services and business models and identification of enabling policies, standards and regulation; and
- understanding enablers and barriers to customer adoption of demand flexibility technology, and customer behaviour in response to its implementation.
