New rules planned by Australian energy leaders add to the good news for storage providers in the country as reported by Greentechmedia.
The proposed rule changes were announced after a four-year maturation. The rules are designed to unbundle the country’s grid services and effectively separate the supply of energy and provision of ancillary services. This is in contrast to the previous government, which dictated that a company can only sell all their services to one buyer which is the energy retailer.
At present, the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) has resolved that consumers should be able to sell their ancillary services to the party they prefer or choose, which will open up the field for smaller players.
According to Brett Simon, GTM Storage Analyst, allowing energy storage to provide ancillary service opens up additional market opportunity for storage in Australia. Some of the winners from this change could include demand-side aggregators and software companies with products that will help customers understand and participate in ancillary service markets.
Examples of such companies include GreenSync, Reposit Power, EnerNOC, Geli and Sunverge. Some of them are already involved in trials funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) to show the effectiveness of their technologies and their business models.
The unbundling is one of the many steps taken to help inspire a healthy storage market in Australia. Different measures have been taking place locally and across the country to aid energy storage.
ARENA also directly helps fund storage initiatives. One of the projects supported by the agency is the $17.4 million Conergy project to build and operate a 10.8 megawatt PV plant complete with a 5.3 megawatt-hours of lithium-battery storage.
The $400 million Kingfisher project of the Lyon Group is moving forward without any direct government support. Once built, it will feature a 100-megawatt battery storage unit paired with a 100-megawatt solar power plant.
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Featured Image Credit: Philippe Ro
Solar Trust Centre Team
