Western Power, Community Battery

Summary

Need

The batteries will manage the risks of system instability associated with high penetration of distributed energy resources (DER) enabling the coordination of more DER and providing a network benefit through load shifting, indirectly reducing emissions.

In contrast to residential and utility scale battery storage, distribution network scale storage market remains in the early stages of development, with only small volumes deployed. Community batteries are a promising solution to enable the storage of distributed renewable energy for later use, reduce distribution network constraints, and put downward pressure on electricity prices.

Action

The Project will deploy community batteries across Western Australia throughout the South West Interconnected System. The Community Batteries will provide network services including voltage, capacity and stability support, and will reduce customer bills through arbitrage and provision of low-cost reserve capacity.

The Recipient will work with the non-contestable residential retailer to try to develop and implement a customer storage product that allows households to store excess rooftop solar PV generation for later consumption (virtual storage).

A Community Benefit Plan will be developed to establish a mechanism for the Recipient to distribute any unanticipated material profits realised from the Project to communities.

Outcome

The objectives for the Project will be achieved through the following Outcomes:

1. increase in the value delivered by renewable energy by improving the economics of Community Battery projects through the reduction in, or removal of, barriers to large-scale deployment;
2. increased skills, capacity and knowledge relevant to renewable energy technologies by building industry capability to deploy community batteries at scale;
3. increase in the value delivered by renewable energy by:
   1. putting downward pressure on household electricity costs;
   2. contributing towards lowering emissions;
   3. providing a net benefit to the electricity network, having regard to matters such as network constraints; and
   4. enabling storage of distributed solar energy for later use or sharing and supporting further distributed solar installations.

Additional impact

The Project will develop and deliver a Community Benefit Plan.