Energy Management Systems

Australian battery technology startup Relectrify has been given the tick of approval by the International Electrotechnical Commission for its ReVolve energy storage product, opening the way for the company to scale up the global rollout of its cell-level control technology.

The “Solar Box” mobile power plant is a container consisting of solar modules, a battery storage system, and a hydrogen storage system. According to Austria’s Alternative Energy Projects (AEP), the system starts at 94 kW and can be scaled up to more than 5 MW.

South Australian electricity distributor SA Power Networks has announced it will work with retailers AGL and Simply Energy to explore opportunities to enable the orchestration of existing rooftop solar systems, an innovation that is expected to support the increased uptake of renewables and help the stability of the grid.

The Queensland government will acquire the $5 billion (USD 3.37 billion) CopperString transmission line project which is set to unlock 6 GW of renewable energy resources and connect Queensland’s North West Minerals Province to Australia’s national grid. The shovel-ready project, many years in the making, is hailed as the biggest expansion to Australia’s energy grid in decades.

Australian energy management software company SwitchDin has announced it will build the Southern Hemisphere’s largest lab dedicated to researching and testing distributed energy resources at its headquarters in the New South Wales Hunter region.

Australian energy storage systems provider Evo Power has teamed with battery optimisation technology provider Evergen in a move which aims to make it easier for commercial and industrial-scale battery customers to optimise and monetise their assets.

Australian energy management software company Simble Solutions is partnering with energy heavyweight Origin Energy in a move which it said will help its commercial and industrial customers make the transition to net zero emissions.

Olivier Corradi, the CEO of Electricity Maps, speaks to pv magazine about why 24/7 granular accounting of electricity is key to decarbonisation and how the company tracks the carbon intensity of otherwise elusive electrons.

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) has renewed calls for Australia to expedite generation, transmission and storage projects to ensure reliability of the country’s electricity supply. Interestingly, AEMO’s update notes South Australia, the state with the biggest share of variable renewable generation, faces the smallest reliability gap, meanwhile big batteries are successfully plugging short-term concerns.

Last December, Australia’s first large-scale battery funding round fast-tracked eight new grid-forming projects with a combined capacity of 2.0 GW / 4.2 GWh. That same month, the country’s fresh federal government announced it would enact a major underwriting scheme to incentivise renewable storage across the country. The moves echo those which inaugurated big solar in Australia, but the transformative potential of these storage plays will, it seems, take a different shape.