Australian Utility Will Supply Storage Services to Remain Relevant in “New Energy” Age

Energy Storage Booming in Australia

Utilities in Europe and Australia are facing new constraints with the rapid uptake of renewable energy and distributed energy resources (DER) such as energy storage. It is a question of adapting or dying. Australia is already a trailblazer in DER with almost 20% of Australian homes having solar panel systems installed in their homes. It is estimated that this number will keep increasing with improving economic viability. Sunny Australia is also expected to see 20% of its homes installing lithium battery storage as energy prices increase. Already all the top energy storage suppliers such as Tesla, Sonnen, and others have set up offices “Down Under” and are aggressively pushing energy storage sales.

Sonnen has come up with a disruptive Australian storage offer of offering a flat price package for a given amount of electricity. The company derives revenues by using the batteries installed at customer homes for frequency regulation services that it sells into the electricity market.

Also, read Why big storage companies are eyeing Australia to launch their products

AGL Energy which is one of Australia’s biggest energy suppliers has also started a pilot of installing 1000 batteries in customer homes and using these batteries as a virtual power plant to sell capacity and balancing services in the wholesale market. European utilities have already drastically changed their business models as their stocks have crashed due to rapid changes in the power market. Instead of selling commoditized power services to customers, these utilities have changed to platforms to sell a wide variety of products and services to customers such as solar energy, storage, energy efficiency etc. in order to remain relevant. Business, as usual, is going to kill these developed market utilities as the energy industry sees its biggest disruption since the advent of the traditional power industry.

One of Australia’s leading power suppliers, AGL Energy (AGL.AX), has offered cheap batteries to 1,000 homes with solar panels as part of what it describes as the world’s biggest “virtual power plant” in Adelaide, South Australia, a state plagued by blackouts over the past year.

The batteries will be centrally controlled by software from U.S. firm Sunverge, allowing AGL to instantly tap 5 megawatts of power that can help stabilize the grid when needed. Battery owners will be left with enough power for their own needs and paid for any excess energy they provide to AGL.

Source: Reuters