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Project overview
  • Lead Organisation

    Synergy

    Location

    Alkimos Beach, Western Australia

    ARENA Program

    Emerging Renewables Program

  • Start date

    20 August 2014

    End date

    24 December 2021

  • Project Partners
    Lendlease Communities (Alkimos) Pty Ltd , Synergy, Development WA
    This DER project was completed on 24 December 2021.

Summary

The Solar and Storage Trial at Alkimos Beach Residential Development project involves developing, deploying and testing the commercial feasibility of a new energy retail model. It will combine community scale battery storage, high penetration rooftop solar PV and energy management within a new residential development at Alkimos Beach, Western Australia.

Key results

The Alkimos Beach Energy Storage Trial fulfilled its key objective to test the feasibility of a new servicing model; delivered economic and non-economic benefits to participants, Synergy as the electricity retailer and LendLease as the property developer; and provided learnings to shape the future of land developments with large-scale community energy storage.

The Trial also successfully leveraged new technologies such as battery energy storage, solar PV and smart meters in conjunction with new retail tariffs and with the support of an educational behavioural change program.

Need

The Solar and Storage Trial at Alkimos Beach Residential Development recognises that there are currently no existing tariffs to allow community energy storage to discharge into electricity networks.

There is also a need to better understand the electricity supply reliability provided by a combination of renewable energy generation and integration (enabling) products compared with traditional poles and wires.

Project innovation

The Solar and Storage Trial at Alkimos Beach Residential Development project will:

  • design, manufacture and install a fully contained lithium ion energy storage system of approximately 250 kW peak / 1.1 MWh;
  • install an Energy Smart Home Package in at least 100 homes; and
  • develop and test at least three new electricity retail products.

The new energy retail model will demonstrate how critical integration (enabling) technologies can be commercially supported by innovative products and services to unlock additional value from rooftop solar PV for consumers, land developers, electricity retailers and network operators.

The trial also aims to address potential caps on PV hosting capacity on local electricity network by network operators in Western Australia.

Benefit

The project will demonstrate how to integrate, operate and manage integration (enabling) technologies with high levels of solar PV in an Australian metropolitan suburb.

A centralised battery will provide customers with the benefits and incentives of stand-alone storage without requiring on-site installation and maintenance.

The project will also provide valuable insights into:

  • performance data from large distribution battery within the network;
  • performance data relating to peak load reduction resulting from battery installation;
  • customer responses to renewable energy and storage in comparison to non-participating households.
Last updated 05 September 2022

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