The funding will be made available through concessional loans and equity investments to Western Australia (WA) through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) to new builds and major upgrades to transmission in the state’s major electricity grids.

Priority project in these grids, the South West Interconnected System (SWIS) and the North West Interconnected System (NWIS), were identified through WA’s demand assessment processes, with recent Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) modelling supporting the need for sustained investment in transmission infrastructure in the SWIS.

Upgrading the SWIS and NWIS networks

The SWIS is WA’s main electricity network and serves more than 1.1 million residential and business customers in Perth and across the South West. It starts north in Kalbarri, runs through Perth down to Albany in the south and extends to Kalgoorlie in the east.

The deal will finance priority projects across the SWIS to increase the supply of renewable energy and connect it into the grid by plugging in renewable generation hubs.

Initial modelling, states a release from the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, suggests that in 20 years’ time, the SWIS grid will need to have up to five times more electricity than is available today as new industrial users connect to the grid.

The Pilbara’s NWIS consists of largely standalone networks owned by private companies and public entities with only a very small proportion (less than 2%) of electricity generated from renewables, adds the Minister’s office.

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The agreement will support more renewable energy in the NWIS, while ensuring existing infrastructure upgrades are coordinated between industries and governments.

Stated the Prime Minister: “Today we are joining forces with the Cook Government on a AU$3 billion landmark deal to deliver affordable cleaner energy to West Australians.

“Rewiring the Nation will help future proof WA’s energy supply, while also creating new jobs in energy, mining and manufacturing.”

Added Premier of Western Australia Roger Cook: “In WA we are delivering on our sensible and achievable plan to decarbonise our existing industries and create new clean energy industries as we transition to net zero, unlocking new projects while supporting new and ongoing local jobs.

“This significant package means we can accelerate the development of key energy transmission projects to facilitate decarbonisation, while also building on my Government’s climate action plan and initiatives already underway towards more secure, cleaner, reliable and affordable energy supplies.

An investment of this scale is expected to support around 1,800 construction jobs and unlock future projects across WA, helping to empower regional communities.

In the AEMC’s proposal, cost savings for customers would be made through a coordinated rollout led by energy networks developing a legacy meter retirement plan, with retailers overseeing upgrades to smart meters.

The AEMC’s final recommendations would see new obligations placed on retailers to provide customer-friendly information prior to meter installations, adequate notice regarding any tariff changes and a mandate on customer access to real-time data free of charge.

The smart meter rollout recommendations also include the development of a communications strategy to inform and assist consumers with their choices and support vulnerable customers with premises requiring remediation before a smart meter can be installed.

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Commenting on the recommendations was AEMC chair Anna Collyer: “Smart meters present clear benefits for consumers and form a crucial link for the wider energy system, paving the way for significant advances necessary to reach net zero.

“Today’s final recommendations aim to address key customer pain points by providing better notice ahead of tariff changes to prevent “bill shock”, as well as guidance for customers about how they can use tariffs to save on their power bill.

“Knowledge really is power and that’s why we’re also recommending a mandate on customer access to real-time data about their own energy usage, so that they can maximise their savings from the touch of a device in their own homes,” added Collyer.

The AEMC released its recommendations following a review of smart meters, finding that an accelerated rollout would help customers reduce their household bills in the short term and provide savings for all energy users in the longer term.

The independent review has determined that speeding up the rollout of smart meters to 100% of households by 2030 would provide net benefits to the value of AU$507 million ($327.8 million) for national electricity market regions, including New South Wales, Queensland, the Australian Capital Territory and South Australia.

The final recommendations take in feedback from extensive consultation with stakeholders and the AEMC will now work with energy advocacy bodies on next steps in the rule change process.

A draft report of 20 recommendations was released by the AEMC in November last year, which included changes to energy rules to support a more coordinated programme of meter replacements in addition to ensuring appropriate safeguards for privacy.

The Powerledger Chain is the third generation blockchain from the company, which was one of the pioneers of the technology in the energy sector, and is designed to facilitate the development of scalable decentralised apps that are able to handle thousands of transactions per second at low cost.

Example challenges highlighted include intermittency from solar and wind and grid congestion.

“Today is the most significant day in our blockchain journey as we make our game-changer Powerledger Chain public as it offers scalability, security, and energy efficiency,” said Powerledger technical director and co-founder, John Bulich.

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“It’s the ideal platform for developing green and affordable energy solutions that pave the way to a brighter future.”

The Powerledger Chain is a customised permissioned Solana blockchain utilising proof-of-history and proof-of-stake consensus mechanisms to deliver the required throughput with lower energy requirements compared with proof-of-work blockchains.

Powerledger has developed a range of solutions in the areas of energy trading and traceability, flexibility trading and environmental commodities training.

These are at various stages of implementation in a dozen countries including Australia, India, the US and within Europe and Asia.

Another issue Powerledger highlights is that of centralisation, with the growing distributed energy system challenging the traditional centralised approach.

With decentralisation at its core, the public blockchain’s role in energy does not necessarily dismiss centralisation, but offers the importance of a balanced approach with the power of highly scalable blockchain-based solutions, the company states.

“The responsibility for grid management can be negotiated among stakeholders using a decentralised paradigm that uses smart contracts on our new public blockchain.”

Details on affected companies have not been released, although the company is conducting an analysis into potentially affected systems.

Energy One offers solutions and services, managing the “entire wholesale energy portfolio” for customers in energy trading and logistics, serving energy retailers, generators, users, customers and traders, ranging from startups to multinational organisations.

According to the company’s statement, immediate steps were taken to limit the impact of the incident. The company engaged cybersecurity specialists, CyberX, and alerted the Australian Cyber Security Centre and UK authorities.

As part of the company’s efforts to mitigate the effects of the attack, certain links were disabled between its corporate and customer-facing systems.

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The company is currently coordinating an ongoing inquiry and response into the incident to determine what information and systems were affected.

Another priority, states the company, is determining the initial point of entry.

Commenting on the incident was Camellia Chan, CEO and co-founder of Flexxon, an AI cybersecurity specialist company, who stated that “the Energy One cyber-attack demonstrates the increasing risk threat actors pose to critical national infrastructure (CNI).”

According to Chan, CNI marks prime targets for cybercriminals as their “systems are underpinned by a myriad of complex devices, meaning the consequences if these are infiltrated can be devastating and put real people at risk. For example, SSE supplies gas and electricity to seven million homes and is an Energy One customer.”

Cybersecurity gaps and QR codes

States Chan: “To meet the fast-evolving threat landscape, businesses need to be proactive in assessing security gaps and address those with innovative and proven tools. Using low-level AI at the hardware level in devices, for example, is a game-changer.

“Unlike traditional cybersecurity measures, this robust last line of defence protects against sophisticated attacks while removing the need for human intervention.

“Ultimately, for all organisations, but CNI in particular, cyber security must be an integral part of IT systems. One Energy shows us you can’t afford to have weak spots.”

The announcement of the attack on Energy One comes as cybersecurity has been growing as a concern for those in the energy sector.

In the same week as Energy One announcement, US-based computer security services company Cofense published an analysis of an observed large phishing campaign.

The campaign utilised QR codes targeting Microsoft credentials of users from various sectors; “the most notable target” states the company in a blog post, was “a major energy company in the US, saw about 29% of the over 1,000 emails containing malicious QR codes.”

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According to Cofense author Nathaniel Raymond, the energy company was the main focus of the campaign, which sent out phishing emails containing PNG images with phishing links or redirects through a QR code, with the majority of them being Bing redirect URLs.

Raymond states that QR codes can reach inboxes with hidden malicious links. These links can also be embedded into other images to disguise the QR code as an image attachment, or embedded image in a PDF file.

“While automation such as QR scanners and image recognition can be the first line of defense, it is not always guaranteed that the QR code will be picked up, especially if it’s embedded into a PNG or PDF file.

“Therefore, it is also imperative that employees are trained not to scan QR codes in emails they receive. This will help ensure that accounts and businesses security remain safe,” concludes Raymond.

The high voltage conductors contract is part of the Powering Tomorrow Together programme run by Transgrid, bundling procurement for major projects HumeLink, VNI West and EnergyConnect.

The programme will enable Transgrid to purchase materials, such as substation equipment, earlier and at a lower cost, enabling limited resources to be used across multiple projects.

The orders are also supported by AU$385 million ($249 million) Australian Government underwriting as part of the Rewiring the Nation program.

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Commenting on the announcement in a release was Transgrid CEO Brett Redman: “We continue to build our global supply chain to secure the specialised kit needed to build the future clean energy grid and ensure competitive and efficient delivery of the Federal Government’s energy plans.

“We are also finalising a separate contract with another Australian company to supply other locally-produced conductor elements.”

Dean Farrar, ZTT Australia’s general manager, said the conductors will be manufactured in equipment manufacturer ZTT Group’s Hekou manufacturing campus and will be delivered to Australia in 2024 and 2025.

“We are honoured to be partnering with Transgrid for their current and future major projects. This contract builds on our ongoing commitment to support the Australian energy and telecommunications markets, now and into the future,” stated Farrar.

This year Transgrid also secured 15 shunt reactors and 25 single-phase transformers worth approximately AU$150 million ($97 million), with arrival planned for late 2024.

According to Transgrid, more than 2,500km of new transmission lines are needed to ensure access to renewable generators and interconnection between regions required to drive down wholesale energy costs.

Over the next decade, Transgrid plans to invest AU$14 billion ($9.4 billion) to build new transmission infrastructure including the AU$7 billion ($4.7 billion), 1,600km Southern Superhighway made up of three major critical transmission projects – EnergyConnect, HumeLink and VNI West.

Transgrid’s Powering Tomorrow Together Program is bundling procurement for these three projects to secure needed equipment and materials.

The Digital Infrastructure Energy Flexibility (DIEF) pilot project will bring together a consortium of project sponsors responsible for funding, research outcomes, coordinating artificial intelligence competitions and onboarding buildings onto a digital platform in the hopes of developing flexible demand tech.

Flexible demand, states CSIRO, is an alternative to the traditionally rigid energy network infrastructure, offering a way to lighten the load on the grid during busy periods. However, the flexible demand approach is still nascent and requires new technologies, market processes and ways of engaging with energy users.

The DIEF pilot will address these issues, whereby up to 200 buildings, selected by the consortium will be connected to CSIRO’s Data Clearing House Platform (DCH), which will act as the digital infrastructure for the project.

DCH is a software platform for owners and operators of existing or new commercial, industrial, government and mixed-use developments to connect with service providers to solve common data-related problems.

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CSIRO’s energy director, Dr Dietmar Tourbier, said the DIEF project would help improve the viability and uptake in flexible demand, delivering benefits to consumers and industry alike:

“Flexible demand is critical because it ensures grid stability, reduces costs, supports increasing renewable energy integration and enables a more sustainable and efficient energy system.”

The project will allow property owners within the pilot to share data and build innovative software applications for sophisticated management of building carbon emissions.

Property owners will be able to identify opportunities for energy flexibility and productivity improvements resulting in reduced operating costs and energy use.

The data collected during the trial will be used to inform Government on the creation of a flexible demand policy and asset register.

Commented CSIRO chief research consultant for energy, Dr Stephen White: “This technology will not only allow people to get data out of their buildings and make it accessible to their service providers, but they will also be able to receive data from external providers such as the electricity market and the Bureau of Meteorology.”

Of the 200 buildings to be connected, the DCH expects to gain access to devices that consume over five megawatts of power from the grid, up to 0.08% of total demand in NSW. The power usage of these devices can be intelligently controlled to match up with periods of high renewable generation.

The DCH Platform forms part of CSIRO’s developing Smart Energy Mission which is focused on building Australia’s next generation of integrated and equitable energy systems.

Members of the NSW consortium who are sponsoring the project include CSIRO, the NSW Government, Amber Electric, DNA Energy, EVSE Australia, Nube iO, Property and Development NSW, RACE for 2030 CRC, UNSW, UOW, and Wattwatchers.

The project was funded with an AU$3.75 million ($2.43 million) grant from the NSW Government, under the Net Zero Plan Stage 1: 2020-2030. The remaining funding (cash and in-kind) was provided by consortium members and in-kind funding from CSIRO.

Kaluza heads ‘down under’

UK headquartered energy software company Kaluza is planning to expand its activities in Australia and New Zealand with an office in Melbourne led up by former London-based client solutions director, Conor Maher-McWilliams.

Over the next 12 months, Kaluza intends to build a local team of experts to support activity in the region.

The team will work closely with Kaluza customer AGL Energy, one of Australia’s largest energy retailers and generators, on the ‘OVO Energy Australia’ joint venture to accelerate the adoption of clean energy solutions across the country and develop new EV and solar propositions for AGL’s customers.

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Kaluza is also expanding its managed charging programme to New Zealand with Meridian Energy. Through this new service, Kaluza will manage the charging of Meridian Energy’s customers’ EVs in response to their needs as well as market signals and pricing data.

Scott Neuman, CEO of Kaluza, described the development as “an important milestone” for the company’s global expansion, which so far has extended to Europe, North America and Japan.

Training for the energy transition

Britain’s Heriot-Watt University, known for its technical training, is launching a new Master of Science degree programme to provide advanced training in the energy transition.

The programme, run from the University’s Orkney campus, is taught both in person and online, with a focus on the technologies, systems, processes and economics, alongside the design of transition projects to move away from fossil fuels and accelerate the integration of renewable energy.

The MSc in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Transition, to give its full title, has been developed by the mechanical and energy systems engineer Susan Krumdieck and is built around the rapidly growing discipline of ‘transition engineering’, an interdisciplinary approach to change for unsustainable systems across power, transport, industry, real estate and other sectors, according to a statement.

Krumdieck, who hails originally from New Zealand, is Chair of Energy Transition Engineering at Heriot-Watt and her research group has led the development of ‘transition engineering’ as a discipline since the early 2000s.

“If the world is to decarbonise and reach net zero emissions by 2050, whole systems will have to be redesigned and redeveloped, including energy infrastructure, technology, regulation and markets,” she commented.

“A new generation of transition engineering specialists is needed to drive this change – and our MSc ReSET is firmly focused on helping students and professionals develop these vital skills – so they can help to reset global energy systems.”

The MSc programme has four themes: Transition Engineering, Economics and Commercialisation, Renewable Energy Technology and Energy Systems.

Hydrogen trains – before their time?

Germany has been a pioneer with hydrogen-powered trains over the past five years and the rail operator Landesnahverkehrsgesellschaft Niedersachsen (LNVG) was the first, a year ago, to launch a network of such trains using Alstom’s Coradia iLint rolling stock.

But now the company has decided that its future – at least for the next generation – is with battery-powered trains, citing their cheaper operating costs.

LNVG is now planning to obtain 102 new units with battery-powered technology, which will progressively replace its diesel rolling stock from 2029 onwards until the last diesel is withdrawn in 2037.

Hydrogen has been billed as the option for emission-free trains on lines that have not been electrified. However, an advantage of the battery-powered trains is that they can run on both electrified lines, drawing on the power and recharging batteries via the pantograph, and non-electrified lines using the battery power with charging from purpose-built charging islands.

LNVG has not specified what the cost differences are or where they arise. But like hydrogen for road transport, undoubtedly the ‘chicken and egg’ of infrastructure availability vs demand is likely to be a factor.

With hydrogen-powered trains under test in other locations such as Canada, their potential is very much a space to watch.

The pilot, the state’s largest, is planned to install more than 16,000 digital smart water meters at homes and businesses across the city.

The aim is to provide insights on the benefits of the smart meters, including how data can help customers change water use behaviours and which meters work best in local conditions.

The first meters are expected to be installed with about 250 customers in west Perth this month, with the wider rollout planned to take place from October.

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“We know by empowering people with information about how they use water, they’re more likely to take action to reduce their consumption,” says Water Minister Simone McGurk.

“Through this pilot, we’ll gain valuable insights into how to best utilise smart meters in Perth. This will inform the pace and scale of future installations, and help Water Corporation on its journey to become a leading digital utility.”

The Water Corporation already has installed some 40,000 smart meters, particularly in larger commercial properties and in regional areas where there may be property access issues including Kalgoorlie-Boulder in the east, parts of the Pilbara in the north and Yanchep to the north of Perth.

In those locations the technology has been found to improve safety and efficiency by removing the need for the physical meter reading.

The smart water meters transmit data on an hourly basis, which should lead to the early detection of leaks or other unusual water use patterns with their implications for customer bills.

Average rainfall across southern Western Australia has fallen by 20% since the 1970s, leading to an 80% reduction in dam inflows, according to a statement.

This in turn has increased Perth’s reliance on water sources such as desalination.

The smart water meters are expected to support both more efficient use of water resources as well as the Water Corporation’s digitalisation journey.

Trial participants will have access to an online Water Corporation account from around mid-2024.

The pilot is planned to finish in mid-2025.

The utility has reported making progress with the state’s first of its kind community microgrid, which will power around 100 homes in Bawley Point and Kioloa, 250km south of Sydney on Australia’s southeast coast.

The AU$8 million (US$5.3 million) project is on track to be operational by the end of the year, Endeavour Energy has reported.

The community microgrid will act as a self-contained energy system, harnessing electricity from renewable sources including rooftop solar, home-based batteries, and a 3MW grid connected battery, strategically positioned between the two communities.

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This configuration empowers the microgrid to operate autonomously during outages, forming an island of power for the community, a statement reads.

Guy Chalkley, Endeavour Energy’s chief executive officer, said the microgrid will lead the way in making isolated communities more resilient while laying the foundation for future renewable energy solutions.

Bawley Point and Kioloa are both situated on the edge of the Endeavour Energy network and prone to adverse weather events and thus vulnerable to supply disruptions.

“The grid independence provided by this microgrid becomes essential for their survival and safeguarding our regional communities,” he said.

“What makes this microgrid the first of its kind is the customer centric and integrated approach to planning – we can call upon a customer’s energy resources such as rooftop solar and batteries to add resilience to the network and the community’s power supply.”

Endeavour Energy, which reports co-designing the solution in partnership with the local community, anticipate that it will serve as a blueprint for other communities and is exploring additional locations that could benefit from similar microgrid installations.

Also on the radar are announcements of a ‘resilient’ business model based on smart meter-generated revenue for Smart Metering Systems (SMS), growth financing for a smart meter data analysis provider and a €3 billion ($3.9 billion) scheme for cleantech companies in Germany.

AMI provider Ubiik acquires Mimomax Wireless

Taiwan-based Ubiik, an IoT and Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) provider, has acquired New Zealand-based Mimomax Wireless, a provider of communication solutions for narrowband channels.

The acquisition is being touted as an acceleration of Ubiik’s market expansion.

The new combined entity, which has not yet been named, aims to bring new wireless solutions to market, providing communications for utilities and critical infrastructure.

According to the Taiwanese provider, their current business is on track to exceed 1 million AMI device deployments by 2024, citing the “coverage limitations of existing public LTE networks that impede utilities’ AMI deployments” as the prime challenge they seek a solution towards, the company stated in a joint press release announcing the acquisition.

Since 2007, Mimomax Wireless established itself as a manufacturer of radios utilising Multiple Input, Multiple Output (MIMO) technology.

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The Kiwi company caters to utilities, stakeholders within the energy sectors and governments among others. Their communications solutions, states Mimomax, optimises data throughput and enables near-real-time visibility of critical assets.

Commenting on the announcement was Tienhaw Peng, founder and CEO of Ubiik, who stated how the acquisition “injects additional momentum into our collective growth. In tandem, we’re poised to boost the performance, security and cost-effectiveness of critical networks.”

Ubiik states how the merger will allow for an array of new solutions for mission and business-critical communications. For example, existing US utility customers who have deployed Mimomax products in the narrowband 700MHz Upper Block A can now leverage their spectrum acquisition by adding Ubiik’s goRAN NB-IoT Band 103 as a retrofit.

This opportunity, adds the AMI provider, offers the ability to connect smart meters and IoT devices for “a fraction of the cost of deploying new pLTE infrastructure”.

SMS’s ‘resilient’ smart metering business model

Glasgow-based smart meter and carbon reduction asset developer Smart Metering Systems (SMS) has, within its H1 2023 trading update and outlook report, reported 13.3% revenue growth.

Specifically, the Scottish clean tech company’s Index-linked Annualised Recurring Revenue (ILARR), a referral to revenue generated from meter rental and data contracts, grew from £97.1 million ($125.4 million) at the close of December 2022 to £110 million ($142 million) as of June 30, 2023.

The company’s CEO, Tim Mortlock, commented on the growth, citing the ‘resilience’ of their model:

“We have delivered another strong operational and financial performance during H1 2023, a testament to the resilient nature of our business model which is underpinned by our index-linked recurring revenues.

“Our existing pipeline of meter and grid-scale battery assets is expected to more than double the Group’s EBITDA in c.4 years compared to FY 2022, with significant additional growth opportunities in existing and developing CaRe assets.”

Within the first half of 2023, the company SMS installed 220,000 smart meters and has maintained market share of 14%.

According to the report, their engineering capacity delivered higher volumes of activity, largely driven by transactional callout services alongside a higher proportion of single fuel installations.

The Group also increased its engineering capacity and expects meter installation run-rate to accelerate as a result.

When it comes to financing, the Group claims its current pipeline of smart meters and grid-scale batteries can be fully funded from asset-backed, internally-generated cash flows and debt facilities.

The Group is also considering asset recycling to maintain a “prudent level of gearing in the medium term and to support future growth”, they state in the release.

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Expansion financing for a smart meter data analysis provider

CIBC Innovation Banking has increased its growth financing commitment to Bidgely, a provider of AI-powered energy intelligence solutions for energy providers worldwide.

The additional financing commitment of $18 million – 2020 saw Bidgely secure $8 million from the same company – will strengthen Bidgely’s ability to support critical utility initiatives, namely within the EV and grid modernisation markets.

Bidgely’s UtilityAI analyses smart meter data to provide appliance-level insights into daily energy consumption, giving utilities insights into energy usage patterns and anticipated grid loads.

Bidgely touts its platform’s ability to coordinate accurate grid planning and load forecasting, together with the ability to better manage the influx of EVs on the grid through optimised time of use, load shifting and managed charging.

“Utilities around the world rely on Bidgely’s artificial intelligence-powered energy solution to guide their clients to smart energy decisions,” said Amy Olah, managing director of CIBC Innovation Banking. “Our continued support speaks to Bidgely’s success and our commitment to back innovative software companies across North America throughout their growth journey.”

€3bn for German low-carbon tech – batteries, heat pumps and more

The European Commission has approved a €3 billion ($3.9bn) German scheme under the Temporary Crisis and Transition Framework to support private investments in low-carbon assets for the country’s transition to net zero.

The scheme, touted as in line with the tenets of the proposed Green Deal Industrial Plan, will take the form of direct grants, tax advantages, subsidised interest rates and guarantees on new loans for companies producing low-carbon technologies.

Said companies will include those with business in battery energy storage, heat pumps, electrolysers, wind turbines, solar panel, CCUS and key components needed to produce such tech or related critical raw materials necessary for their production.

The aid will be meted out by 31 December 2025.

For the latest finance and investment news coming out of the energy sector, make sure to follow Smart Energy Finances Weekly.

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Transgrid is entering a competitive procurement process to buy services from new battery projects before finalising contracts with successful proponents in the Bathurst, Orange and Parkes region as well as NSW.

Grid-scale batteries have been identified as part of the preferred options for maintaining reliable supply for the regions. Both regions are forecast to experience significant increases to electricity demand due to increasing industrial loads.

Commenting on the battery projects announcement was Transgrid executive general manager of network Marie Jordan, who stated how the procurement: “marks a doubly significant milestone because when they were compared to other options grid-scale batteries came out on top in both regions in terms of providing the biggest benefits.

“Our grid is changing, which is why we’re going beyond the traditional poles and wires approach and embracing new technologies and business models to meet the needs of consumers and keep the system reliable.

“We’re looking to purchase services from providers who own and operate battery storage. This approach helps meet growing demand in both regions faster than upgrading the existing network.

Jordan added how the benefits offered by grid-scale batteries will unlock new capacity on the transmission grid; service providers will also be able to use said batteries to trade in the energy market when not in use.

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Australia a battery market leader

According to an analysis from Wood Mackenzie launched at the Australian Clean Energy Summit in Sydney, Australia, the country leads the global market for battery energy storage systems.

Specifically, states the research company, the country’s total pipeline of announced battery projects now exceeds 40GW.

“The recent surge in renewable energy and competitive market design has made Australia one of the most attractive markets for grid-scale energy storage globally,” states Kashish Shah, senior research analyst at Wood Mackenzie.

“Helped by the presence of competitive wholesale and frequency control markets offering diverse revenue streams for battery storage, and significant funding from the Australian government providing revenue certainty to storage projects. Because of this, we expect a 28% increase in the country’s battery storage capacity from now until 2032.”

According to their analysis, two-hour grid-scale batteries are currently the most prevalent technology in Australia as project owners mainly target the high-value frequency control and ancillary services (FCAS) market.

Battery module pricing is expected to decline by more than 40% in Australia and South Korea by 2032 for both LFP and NMC chemistries. This in turn will drive overall system costs down by 18% to 21% on a US$ KWh basis over the next ten years – becoming the largest cost reduction driver of CAPEX.

Current pricing conditions are due to softening electric vehicle (EV) demand growth and a downturn in lithium prices, which has seen nearly a 46% decrease since November 2022.

Further systemic price declines from additional refining and production capacity are expected by 2025. Wood Mackenzie expects the commodity price declines and technology improvements to also reduce battery module prices in the coming years.

Also on the radar is capital commitments for a Danish renewables fund held by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, which they claim place it on track to being the biggest of its kind globally, as well as the EIB’s raised support package to REPowerEU of up to €45 billion.

Enel sells part of Australian operations

Italian green energy major Enel, acting through its fully-owned subsidiary Enel Green Power (EGP), has signed an agreement with Japan-based INPEX Corporation, for the sale of 50% of the Group’s activities in Australia, namely Enel Green Power Australia and Enel Green Power Australia Trust.

The sale of the two entities, which are currently wholly owned by EGP, went for approximately €400 million ($449 million) enterprise value, €140 million ($157.2 million) of which is in debt.

Upon closing, EGP and INPEX are expected to jointly control EGPA, overseeing the company’s renewable generation portfolio and continuing to develop its project pipeline of wind, solar, storage and hybrid projects.

The overall transaction is expected to generate a positive impact of €87 million ($97.7 million) on the 2023 Group’s ordinary and reported EBITDA.

Moreover, the deal is expected to generate a positive effect on the Group’s consolidated net debt of approximately €145 million ($162.8 million).

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The sale marks the latest from the Enel Group to consolidate its debt: October 2022 saw the Group divest 50% stake in US-based Gridspertise and launch a set of sustainability-linked bonds worth €4.1 billion ($4 billion); March this year saw them sell all equity stakes in its Romanian operations to Greece’s Public Power Corporation.

EGPA operates 3 plants totalling 310MW of installed gross capacity powered by solar as well as one 76MW wind project under construction and one 93MW solar project in execution.

EGPA is also developing a significant portfolio of wind, solar, storage and hybrid projects across Australia.

The sale marks a continued entry into the renewables scene for Inpex, a Tokyo headquartered oil and gas giant – the largest exploration and production company in Japan –  that has recently announced clean hydrogen and ammonia projects, which they claim as a first for Japan.

€5.6 billion for Copenhagen Infrastructure’s fifth fund

Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) has reached first close on its fifth flagship fund – Copenhagen Infrastructure V (CI V) – at €5.6 billion ($6.3 billion) in capital commitments received.

According to the Danish CIP, which specialises in renewable infrastructure investments  – the commitment place CI V on path to reach its target of €12 billion ($13.4 billion), becoming what the company claims the “world’s largest dedicated greenfield renewable energy fund” they state in a press release.

A large group of institutional investors across continental Europe, the Nordics, the UK, North America and the Asia-Pacific region participated in the first close of CI V.

The investment strategy, states CIP, is a continuation of CIP’s predecessor flagship funds CI I, CI II, CI III, and CI IV, applying a repeated approach where projects are entered early and de-risked and optimised prior to the start of construction to capture an attractive greenfield premium.

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The fund will focus on greenfield investments – a form of foreign direct investment where a parent company starts a new venture in a foreign country by constructing new operations from the ground up.

CPI’s fund will focus on such investments specifically within large-scale renewable energy infrastructure.

According to CIP, the fund has a global reach and intends to diversify investments across technologies such as offshore & onshore wind, energy storage and solar in low-risk OECD countries in North America, Western Europe and Asia Pacific.

At this first close, the Fund has ownership of more than 40 renewable energy infrastructure projects with a total potential commitment of approximately €20 billion ($22.4 billion), corresponding to more than 150% of the target fund size.

#ICYMI: EIB boosts REPowerEU support package to €45 billion

The EIB’s Board of Directors has decided to raise the additional funds earmarked for projects aligned with REPowerEU – a plan designed to end Europe’s dependence on fossil-fuel imports – from the initial €30 billion ($33.5 billion) package announced in October 2022 to €45 billion ($50.2 billion).

The decision was made at the EIB Group’s July meeting in Luxembourg.

The new funding marks a fresh record for the Group, expanding its support to the build-up of manufacturing capacity for strategic net-zero technologies and products.

Projects eligible for financing include renewables, energy storage, grids and energy efficiency, as well as electric vehicle charging infrastructure – Read more.

Make sure to follow Smart Energy Finances for the latest in finance and investment news coming from the energy sector.

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Yusuf Latief
Smart Energy International

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Australia-owned QIC has closed a $1.1 billion green loan for its acquisition of Vector Metering, announced the same day as Intellihub’s acquisition of New Zealand metering solutions provider, Influx Energy Data.

QIC’s $1.1bn green loan for smart metering

Australian state-owned QIC (Queensland Investment Corporation) Infrastructure has closed an AU$1.6 billion (US$1.1 billion) green loan for its acquisition of smart meter business, Vector Metering.

The loan comprises green term loans to fund QIC’s 50% interest in Vector Metering, in addition to green CAPEX facilities to fund the business’ ongoing electricity smart metering expansion across Australia and New Zealand.

The acquisition of Vector Metering, which is touted as the largest smart meter provider of its kind across Australia and New Zealand, was contractually closed earlier this year in April.

The green loan, states QIC, marks the first Use of Proceeds Certification globally under the new Climate Bonds Standard Version 4.0 (CBS v4.0), a labelling scheme for entities, assets, bonds, loans and other sustainability-linked debt instruments in line with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.

QIC claims the green loan as “the largest Climate Bonds Certified green bank loan aligned with the Climate Bonds’ Electrical Grids and Storage eligibility criteria”.

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Smart meters critical for net zero

Ross Israel, head of Global Infrastructure at QIC commented on the green financing, stating the critical role of smart meters in decarbonising Australia and New Zealand.

Specifically, he stated, “Their role is rapidly evolving from data processing for timely billing purposes” to enabling smarter integration of renewables onto the grid and managing the ever-increasing volume and volatility of electricity supply, “due to the broader energy transition and increasing penetration of renewable generation.”

Sean Kidney, CEO of Climate Bonds Initiative, also commented on the financing milestone, which “underscores the importance of transparent and credible certification in mobilising capital for climate-aligned investments and demonstrates a real economy example of transition of energy systems.”

The green loan was issued under Vector Metering’s Green Financing Framework, which was developed in line with the February 2023 update to the Green Loan Principles.

Vector Metering obtained a Verification Report and an assurance opinion from DNV Australia, a Climate Bonds’ Approved Verifier, confirming that the Green Instrument was issued in alignment with the Principles and CBS v4.0.

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MUFG Bank Ltd, National Australia Bank Limited, Westpac Banking Corporation and Westpac New Zealand acted as joint sustainability coordinators on the transaction.

According to QIC, certification under CBS v4.0 demonstrates Vector Metering’s significant commitment to the increasing use of electricity smart metering.

QIC further states how the green loan attracted significant interest from a ‘lending syndicate’ of 11 major domestic and international lenders.

JP Morgan acted as financial advisor on the transaction, with Herbert Smith Freehills and Russell McVeagh acting as borrower’s counsel and Corrs Chambers Westgarth and Bell Gully acting as lenders’ counsel.

Intellihub acquires smart electricity metering solution

On the same day as the announcement of the green financing, Australian and New Zealand smart metering and energy data services business Intellihub announced the acquisition of New Zealand metering solutions provider, Influx Energy Data, from electricity distribution business The Lines Company (TLC).

The Influx metering and data solutions business manages more than 125,000 smart and legacy Installation Control Points on behalf of all major electricity retailers in New Zealand.

The solutions provide cloud-based services that can dynamically control home water heating and energy data, helping customers save on energy costs and = support electricity retailers and distribution networks.

Intellihub CEO Wes Ballantine commented on the acquisition: “We look forward to introducing (Influx’s) customers to our broader metering footprint and innovative investment path. This is another acquisition that supports our goal of enabling intelligent energy use across the region.”

With the addition of Influx, Intellihub now manages more than 2 million smart devices across Australia and New Zealand on behalf of electricity retailers.

The announcement follows Intellihub’s acquisition of energy tech company GreenSync, which has developed a cloud-based DER interoperability software known as DeX – or decentralised energy exchange.

DeX is a digital platform that enables DER registration, near real-time visibility and the control and data management required for Virtual Power Plant (VPP) participation.

Mr Ballantine said the business was now installing 2,000 of its next-gen smart meter in homes and businesses each day across Australia and New Zealand.

“Our next-gen meter includes real-time, high-speed measurements with communications platforms that provide visibility, control, and better management of consumer energy resources,” he said. “This includes the increasing number of solar and battery energy storage systems, EV charging, water heating and pool pumps.

“We have stated our intention to invest further in New Zealand and this acquisition is a material step along that path. We look forward to continuing those investment plans into the future.”

The System Security Roadmap outlines the NSW Transmission Network Service Provider’s programme of works across three critical pillars to build and operate a safe, reliable and low-emissions power system.

Transmission

According to Transgrid, more than 2,500km of new transmission lines are needed to ensure access to renewable generators and interconnection between regions required to drive down wholesale energy costs.

Over the next decade, Transgrid plans to invest AUD14 billion ($9.4 billion) to build new transmission infrastructure including the AUD7 billion ($4.7 billion), 1,600km Southern Superhighway made up of three major critical transmission projects – EnergyConnect, HumeLink and VNI West.

Transgrid’s Powering Tomorrow Together Program is bundling procurement for these three projects to secure needed equipment and materials.

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System security

New system security infrastructure to replace services currently provided by coal generators will require an investment of an estimated AUD2.2 billion ($1.5 billion) over the next decade.

This will be funnelled into new system-strength technologies and services to maintain the secure operating envelope of the grid, equating to 21 large (200MVA) synchronous condensers.

The utility’s recent global Expression of Interest process to provide system strength resulted in nearly 70 potential technology solutions.

These include more than 10GW of existing or conversions of existing synchronous generators, a pipeline of 10GW of grid-forming batteries and 5GW of other new generation and energy storage projects, such as pumped hydro and gas.

Technologies

Over the next decade, Transgrid will need to invest AUD140 million ($93.9 million) to build new operational technology tools and AUD160 million ($107.3 million) to increase staffing levels and training.

This includes advanced digital technologies to provide control room operators with critical information to understand current and evolving system conditions.

Transgrid CEO Brett Redman said on the roadmap: “There will be no transition without transmission. However, the enormity of the task and the challenges we face must not be understated.

“We must embrace innovation, invest in technology, develop a larger and more skilled workforce and strengthen our capabilities if we are to achieve a rapid transition to a low emissions energy system providing clean, affordable and reliable electricity to Australians.”

The new meters come courtesy of a recently announced partnership between the energy monitoring tech developer Sense and EDMI, a smart metering solutions provider and the largest meter supplier in Australia.

The partnership sees Sense’s real time home intelligence software running on EDMI meters, which will bring intelligence to the grid edge.

According to the collaborators in a press release announcing their partnership, these will be the first smart meters in the Asia Pacific (APAC) and Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) regions capable of sampling data at one million times a second (1MHz).

The new resolution is hoped to enable more efficient identification and localisation of grid faults, enhanced device detection and expanded margins for utilities.

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Networks, they add, will benefit from real time grid edge insight (e.g. power quality) and the ability to identify and locate problems on the grid such as vegetation brush and corrosion.

Additionally, they state, retailers will be able to offer new services and energy insights to their customers, access domestic flexibility at scale, coordinate power management across the home and improve their power purchasing with detailed forecasting.

Commenting on the announcement was Michael Jary, Sense’s APAC & EMEA managing director, who stated that the tech will be able to enable load reductions and how, in Australia, “implementing Sense on smart meters would be the equivalent of adding 2.4GW to peak capacity – that’s as much as three coal power stations.

“We’re delighted to be partnering with EDMI, one of the leading smart meter manufacturers in the world, to bring this technology to more homes.”

Li-S batteries vs Li-ion

Australian battery technology company Li-S Energy has announced the development of its first 20-layer battery cells utilising third-generation semi-solid state lithium sulphur battery technology.

Key benefits of the technology the company highlights include a 45% improvement in volumetric energy density reaching 540Wh/l, a higher gravimetric energy density of over 400Wh/kg and enhanced safety with the use of a low flammability electrolyte.

This performance is nearly double the gravimetric energy density and a comparable volumetric energy density compared to current lithium-ion cells, the company states. Thus, in practical terms, this means Li-S battery cells are now the same size as existing Li-ion batteries but half the weight.

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Li-S envisages that its new Gen3 cells, which take advantage of the company’s patented boron nitride nanotubes and Li-nanomesh within the cell construction, will be of particular interest for use in drones and other e-aviation applications – a market in which the company already is established and has estimated will exceed $32 billion per year by 2035.

Iron in the fire – and on the Moon?

In forest fires, it is well known that fire can jump from one tree to the next when the temperature is hot enough for combustion – a phenomenon known as discrete burning that otherwise rarely occurs naturally on Earth.

In order to understand the process in more detail scientists have been investigating the burning of iron dust in the zero gravity environment of space, where the iron particles are able to float and ignite discreetly.

From the use of high-speed imaging capturing the phenomenon, they have produced models showing the ideal conditions to burn the fuel on Earth – and from this, it has been possible to build practical iron-burning furnaces.

The advantage of burning iron is down to chemistry. Essentially, burning fuel is the process of transforming a material by adding oxygen atoms and with iron, the leftover product after combustion is iron oxide, or rust. That can easily be collected and processed to remove the oxygen and return it as iron. Thus, by using electricity from sustainable sources, iron could become a circular, endlessly recyclable fuel.

A demonstration plant using iron as its fuel source is up and running in Budel, near Eindhoven in The Netherlands, by the Dutch startup Metalot, that can produce 1MW of steam in a unit that stands in a warehouse.

Scaled up such an iron power plant could produce much more energy but the technology also could hold potential for use on the Moon, the European Space Agency has suggested. Using solar energy, aluminium and silicon powders can be produced from lunar minerals, and hydrogen and oxygen can be harnessed from lunar ice.

The hydrogen can then be used to convert lunar dust that is high in iron and titanium to produce water and iron powder. The metallic powders and oxygen from the water ice can be used as propellants for rockets or ground transportation and the water by-product could even be used as drinking water.

Greenland rock flour for carbon capture

The application of ground silicate minerals to agricultural soils has been proposed as a method for taking up CO2 by enhancing the weathering rate of these minerals through their exposure to soil acids.

But a new study by Danish researchers suggests that glacial rock flour, a finely grained material formed from rock ground in the glacial erosion process, may be a cheaper and more practical alternative as it is abundantly available and avoids the need for energy intensive grinding.

Like the ground silicate minerals, glacial rock flour has previously been shown to improve agricultural yields in weathered and nutrient-deficient soils. However, the Danish researchers have found that it is also effective for sequestering CO2.

Using glacial rock flour from Greenland, the researchers found that applied with an application to an acidic, sandy soil in Denmark, over a three-year period the estimated CO2 uptake was of a similar order of magnitude to earlier estimates for ground basalt.

The researchers note that their estimate does not take into account emissions due to extraction, transportation and application and these would need to be thoroughly accounted for to ensure the uptake due to weathering outweighs them, although with transportation being progressively decarbonised, those are likely to become less of a factor.

Approximately 1 billion tonnes of glacial rock flour are deposited annually on Greenland. For the researchers, the main issue that still requires further research is the need to ‘ground truth’ their protocol for calculating the CO2 uptake.

The Light Detection and Ranging technology (LiDAR) technology, which is used to create 3-D maps of the Earth’s surface or other objects, was a first for SA Power Networks and the data was used to create a digital twin of the electrical assets and the associated environment.

SA Power Networks reports that as the scale of likely flooding of the River Murray in South Australia started to become apparent in early December 2022, there were two clear areas of focus in response – limiting the disruption of service to river communities and keeping the River communities, emergency service providers and the workforce safe during and after the event, all while conforming to legislated powerline clearances.

With this, the global geospatial intelligence provider Neara was commissioned to map the network.

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With 21,000 spans of lines along the 650km route of the Murray River across the state, this was to prove a significant undertaking.

A light aircraft flying at an altitude of around 400m was used over a five-week period to capture the LiDAR data associated with the assets located within the flood area, with conductors and their attachment points as the highest priority.

In this exercise, some trillions of LiDAR data points were captured at a resolution of 20 points per square metre. These were then classified by infrastructure type, i.e. pole, conductor, building, terrain, and merged with other data sources to create the digital twin of the network.

The data became available in late December as flood levels were about to peak, giving a 3D picture of the poles and wires and their relationship with water levels.

Modelling flood water impacts for network management

The flood water modelling proved the biggest challenge to solve and was achieved by ‘scraping’ data from various sources, including the Bureau of Meteorology and Murray Darling Basin Authority websites every five minutes for live water-level readings.

Once calibrated, the LiDAR data had a validated accuracy of about 220mm.

With this data, SA Power Networks was able to model the impacts on the network assets at various flood levels and to predict where and when powerlines would breach clearances or be inundated requiring electricity disconnection.

“By monitoring water and clearance levels daily, we were able to leave power on for longer for many customers along the river as the floodwaters rose significantly in December and also restore power more quickly as water receded,” says General Manager, Network Management, Doug Schmidt.

“This innovative approach, based on digital insights, allowed for the re-energisation of power lines within five days compared with the originally anticipated three-week time frame using traditional manual methods. The data also was an essential part of ensuring safety for the community, emergency service personnel and our people through the latter part of the flood event.”

SA Power Networks states that at the worst of the flooding – and the worst event since 1956 – 4,000 Stobie poles and 400km of powerlines were standing in flood waters.

Looking ahead SA Power Networks envisages being able to use the data to manage future flood events along the river, while the technology has other potential applications such as vegetation management, which will be investigated.

The toolkit, the next to be made open source by Energy Web, is intended to enable utilities and aggregators to configure and deploy digital spines with a self-hosted integration gateway and cloud-based integration.

Currently integration is with Microsoft’s Azure marketplace but further cloud marketplaces are in prospect as are additional configurations to enable secure gateway devices and/or individual DERs, such as smart inverters, to directly integrate with the digital spines.

The Digital Spine toolkit is also designed to help electric utilities construct and launch new solutions focused on digital twinning of distribution networks, advanced distribution planning, demand forecasting and optimising DER dispatch.

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A digital spine is a network of connected nodes that are deployed by organisations across the energy sector that can enable data to be ingested, standardised and shared in near real time.

Each node ingests data about the energy system, standardises it and shares it via a standard interface that can be accessed by other nodes in the network to enable it to be acted upon.

Such data can include both operational and financial data and for example price signals, essential for the operation of multiple distributed energy assets by multiple parties.

Project EDGE

Project EDGE (Energy Demand and Data Exchange) was undertaken with the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) to demonstrate the potential for aggregations of consumer-owned distributed energy resources to deliver energy services to the wholesale power system and at local network levels.

The Digital Spine powering Project EDGE enables DERs, via aggregators, to sell services such as capacity and voltage support to distribution utilities while simultaneously participating in the wholesale energy market.

Bids and offers between DERs and utilities are constrained by the safe operating ranges or ‘operating envelopes’ of the DERs based on the 5 minute voltage, frequency and power limits they must follow to connect to and interact with the grid.

“If we want to decarbonise the grid, we have to grow a digital spine,” said Jesse Morris, CEO of Energy Web.

“Utilities today simply do not have the tools needed to fully harness grid flexibility from DERs. Digital spines give utilities that capability.”

Digital Spine toolkit

The Digital spine toolkit has five key components:
• A data and message exchange module to enable grid operators to configure and deploy a centralised transport layer in order for market participants to securely exchange messages and datasets.
• A client gateway that provides a standardised interface for market participants to interact with the data exchange module.
• An identity and access management solution built on self-managed, sovereign digital identities to give market participants the ability to mutually authenticate each other’s identity and authorise selective disclosure of data based on roles and responsibilities.
• A governance tool to enable market participants to encode and enforce rules, roles, and responsibilities that must be met in order for companies to integrate with the spine
• The ability to jointly process data using Energy Web’s open source Worker Node technology.

For Project EDGE, worker nodes are used to ingest and process data from AEMO, distribution utilities and DER aggregators prior to partitioning and communicating the operating envelopes to DER aggregators in order to maintain network integrity without disclosing sensitive data.

Energy Web is currently convening an ecosystem of digital solution providers to build commercial applications on top of digital spines.

The project ‘Making optimal use of stormwater in cities: a market-driven smart grid’, is aimed to address the twin challenges of flooding and drought that are prevalent in the urban water industry.

In particular, the proposal is to examine how the use of a smart grid network could enable consumers to reduce their water demand by harnessing urban stormwater by incentivising the release of water to drought-affected streams and mitigating the flood-risk by drawing down water storages prior to large storms.

“We believe we can do for the urban water grid what solar panels have done for the electricity grid,” says Professor Tim Fletcher from the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Science, who will lead the project.

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“We can create a network of connected rainwater tanks that actually pay their owners for contributions they make to reducing floods, supplying water to streams in drought and reducing their own demand for drinking water.”

Water is critical to cities but urban stormwater, such as runoff from roofs and roads, is usually wasted, even though much – up to half in Australia – is generated from private land.

Harnessing this stormwater could supply more than 80% of the urban water that is currently used for non-potable purposes.

The project, which will be undertaken with Melbourne Water Corporation, envisages developing a control platform that can optimise in real-time the use of a smart grid of networked stormwater storage on private land.

This network would enable consumers to reduce water demand by supplying their own non-potable water, but also financially reward them for water releases to streams requiring greater water flows while reducing the flood risk by automatically drawing down storages prior to large storms.

The platform will be commercialised through IP sharing arrangements with private companies, with Melbourne Water facilitating translation through its established partnerships with technology providers, retail water authorities, local government and policymakers.

In addition to the ARC funding, the project also receives Au$1.3 million in university funding as well as support from Melbourne Water.

AR visualisation tool for home chargers

Thinking of installing an electric vehicle (EV) charging unit and wondering where it might fit and what it would look like? If you are in the UK and thinking of a unit from EV charging company Andersen EV, it is now possible to visualise their charging unit with an augmented reality tool on a mobile phone.

Andersen EV, claiming to become the only premium EV home charging company to provide such a tool, says it’s the first in a series of user-centric enhancements for its A2 unit in 2023.

With the A2 unit’s exterior panel available in a choice of 96 colours and multiple finishes – including four durable natural wood options – the tool should enable prospective owners to select the colour and finish to best suit their taste and to help the unit blend seamlessly with their home, whether modern or period.

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Using the camera on a mobile device, the tool first ‘scans’ the area to ascertain the correct scale and then mounts the unit in the centre of the screen for the user to manipulate as they wish.

“Our products are built for longevity and incorporate future-proof technology, and our AR feature aids an important decision about this permanent fixture to one’s home,” says David Martell, CEO of Andersen EV.

Nano inks could make buildings more energy efficient

With buildings being significant energy users, either for heating in winter or air conditioning in summer, more and more effort is being put into materials that can make building surfaces, particularly large office buildings, more energy efficient.

New research at the University of Melbourne has focused on the use of inks that use nanoparticles – nano inks – that can adjust the amount of radiation that can pass through them, based on the surrounding environment, and could be used to develop coatings for buildings that enable passive heating and cooling.

The concept requires the use of a so-called phase change material, such as vanadium oxide (VO2), that changes its phase in response to heat or electricity or another external trigger.

The printable material that has been developed as a proof-of-concept is said to be versatile and adaptable, able to be laminated, sprayed or added to paints and building materials.

As such it should be possible to apply the inks on a large scale cheaply, meaning that it could be easily retrofitted to existing structures and building materials

It could also be incorporated into clothing to regulate body temperature in extreme environments, prevent heat build-up in laptop electronics or protect car windscreens.

The next step involves taking the research, which has been patented by the University of Melbourne, to production, which should be affordable and simple.

With manufacturing interest, it’s likely to take five to 10 years to reach market, the researchers say.

GE appliances top ranked for IoT market

GE Appliances has been recognised for the fifth year in succession as ‘Smart Appliance Company of the Year’ by market intelligence organisation IoT Breakthrough.

In 2022, GE Appliances was a founding member of the Home Connectivity Alliance, whose mission is to provide consumers with a safe, secure and interoperable connected home ecosystem.

The company also has continued to introduce new products and solutions in the smart kitchen and laundry space. Among these is the first washer with built-in Alexa (the GE Profile Top Load 900 series with Alexa) with which wash cycles can be optimised for different materials, while AI cooking has been advanced with a CookCam test group cooking frozen pizzas with AI machine learning in their wall ovens in 2022.

GE Appliances also reports adding new cycles and features, as well as over two dozen software enhancements across its portfolio including integrations with Unsplash, NASA and Twitter in 2022.

Expressing appreciation for the recognition, Shawn Stover, executive director of SmartHome Solutions for GE Appliances, promised the company would continue to make significant investments and further expansion of its smart home ecosystem while also aggressively growing the smart appliance initiative “to make every appliance smart – big and small”.

The acquisition, initially required to be closed by June of this year, remains subject to regulatory approvals and follows Vector’s announcement in December 2022 of QIC as its preferred joint venture partner.

The deal consists of a sale by Vector of a 50% interest in Vector Metering to a new fund and co-investors managed by QIC Infrastructure. The investment is the first asset for this new QIC Infrastructure fund.

Vector Metering owns and manages over 2.3 million meters across the electricity and gas markets in Australia and New Zealand.

QIC’s head of infrastructure, Ross Israel, stated: “With this investment, QIC Infrastructure’s global investments supporting the transition to a low-carbon economy have grown to AUZ$5 billion ($3.3 million).”

The investment, he stated, signals QIC’s investment strategy into energy transition assets.

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QIC closes Vector Metering: Smart metering valuation

According to Australian Financial Review reportage from December 2022, Vector picked QIC as its preferred bidder, beating out competition from the likes of Singapore’s Keppel (an infrastructure investment conglomerate) and Hong Kong’s CKI.

According to a press-issued announcement dated December last year agreed key transaction terms for the acquisition imply an enterprise value for Vector Metering of approximately NZ$2.5 billion ($1.6 billion) against a book value of $0.65 billion ($0.41 billion). Conclusion of the deal was expected to result in gross transaction proceeds of around NZ$1.74 billion ($1.1 billion) to Vector.

Citing the critical role of smart meters in decarbonisation of Australia and New Zealand‘s electricity supply, Israel commented on how they have been “rapidly evolving from data processing for timely billing purposes. They are an enabler for electricity networks to manage an ever-increasing volume and volatility of electricity supply due to the broader energy transition and increasing penetration of renewable generation.

“The electricity mass market is Vector Metering’s core competency. The business is the leading provider in New Zealand where we believe its significant scale will support future growth and the extensive roll-out of smart meters in Australia. The latter opportunity represents further growth and investment for the company.”

Patrick Mulholland, senior principal – Infrastructure, QIC, who led the deal, said QIC’s industry experience and relationships across Australia and New Zealand will be critical in refining Vector Metering’s business plan and strategy.

“Both Vector and QIC bring complementary skills to the business that will support it financially and strategically to grow and enable the energy transition,” Mulholland said.

QIC has further plans to invest over AUS$15 billion ($10 billion) in energy transition assets, details of which have not yet been released.

Advisors to the deal were JP Morgan, Craigs Investment Partners, Herbert Smith Freehills and Russell McVeagh.

The city is demonstrating a fleet-based Vehicle to Grid (V2G) project to illustrate the use of EVs for frequency regulation within a fully renewable-powered system.

In a Government-issued press release, Australian minister for energy and emissions reduction Shane Rattenbury commented on how the project, which was trialled from 2020 to 2022, “has demonstrated that fleet EVs could play a vital role in supporting [the] energy grid and in boosting energy security.

“The insights gained from the past two years will be particularly beneficial during times of peak power usage as a way of balancing renewable energy delivered to the grid.”

The initial trial – which was launched in 2020, concluded on Thursday and dubbed Realising Electric Vehicles to Grid Services (REVS) – used a fleet of 51 Nissan Leaf vehicles to explore the ability of electric vehicles to provide frequency regulation services to the National Electricity Market (NEM).

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Added Rattenbury: “Now that we have achieved 100% renewable electricity in the ACT, we need to significantly reduce emissions from transport to reach our goal of net zero emissions by 2045.”

REVS trial’s results, released earlier this year in February, illustrate the value case of V2G technology across:

• Economic and material efficiency of making better use of vehicles that are currently underutilised when parked (which is most of the time);
• The critical role of flexibility in 100% renewable energy power systems – the large energy storage capacity of individual EV batteries (and larger vehicles) and the large number of vehicles, and
• The significant power capacities with which EVs connect to the grid.

Back when it was announced in 2020, the project was touted by the ACT government as the first time that a fleet of vehicles using bi-directional chargers would supply FCAS (Frequency Control Ancillary Services) to the NEM to improve energy security and avoid blackouts.

It was also stated as the first time an EV fleet would be paid for providing electricity services, testing new revenue streams that could improve the total cost of ownership of EVs.

Fleets make up more than half of all new vehicles sold annually in Australia and transport is the single largest contributor to the Australian Capital Territory’s greenhouse gas emissions, making up over 60% of the total.

The trial, and now live project, is hoped in the future to extend to Canberrans’ privately-owned EVs to bring consumers into the energy system and leverage their EV battery-stored energy to be injected into their homes power systems, if not back into the power grid.

The REVS project was co-funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and the ACT Government and led by ActewAGL Retail in partnership with Evoenergy, Nissan, Jetcharge, SgFleet, the Australian National University and Accenture.

“Need for speed” has become a common adage, reflecting industry frustration with the pace of the energy transition, whether in Europe or elsewhere. The speed with which clean tech has been picked up simply hasn’t been fast enough, partially a result of the increasingly complex nature of our energy systems.

However, as the systems continue to become more integrated and digital, digital twin technologies have been consistently proving their value, especially when it comes to digital grid coordination and expediting processes that traditionally have been painstakingly long.

On the technology, I spoke to the Wilson, CEO of Energy Exemplar, an Australia-based software development company operating globally to provide electric power, gas and water simulations as well as generation, transmission, smart grid and capacity expansion planning.

In what ways do digital twins help with coordinating an increasingly digitalised grid?

Like most industries, the energy sector has become much more complicated over time.

It used to be relatively simple; there were a few large generating assets, power would go through relatively simple transmission, flowing out from distribution into load centres. Over time this has changed drastically.

Now there’s a lot more distributed generation; smaller generation, either embedded domestically or, through the system, connected wind and solar. And now for the first time storage is being connected into the system with batteries. Last but not least there are an increasing number of smart devices both domestically and industrially.

Because of this complexity, understanding the problem is now much more complicated than in the past. Congestion has become much more complex and creates an orchestration problem.

Questions arise around coordinating assets, both generation and transmission as well as flexibility, which is introduced through grid integration of storage systems and the heightened ability to control demand. All of these are of utmost importance and figuring out how to orchestrate it all and getting it to work in sync is a very important question to tackle.

A big part of the work of digital twins is to understand the capacity of each asset, what they can do and how to get them to work together for the best outcome.

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Would you say that this lends to heightened visibility across infrastructure?

Anytime someone gets more awareness of the operating environment, they can make better decisions. This is especially true with building digital twins into the energy system.

Energy systems are continuously becoming more integrated. It’s no longer as it was in the past when we were able to think of different parts of the system independently and make decisions accordingly.

Europe proves a good example with the impact of the Ukraine crisis. Russia turning off the gas illustrated the interconnection of gas and electricity networks. A lot of electricity is generated from gas, but so too for heating. Similarly, as transportation and industry electrifies more, those networks are more tightly coupled. To understand the energy system, one can’t just look at a single piece, it needs to be understood in its totality.

And we’re seeing that move even further into the future, particularly with hydrogen – which is especially the case for Europe, although we expect it to accelerate around the world. This creates another level of integration, particularly into the electricity sector. It also creates flexibility and opportunity where excess renewables can be leveraged for storage.

To understand the system and to operate successfully in the energy systems of today, the big picture needs to be understood with good situational awareness.

We need to understand how everything is interconnected, what dependencies are where and what the state is of each of those different assets.

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When it comes to the ‘need for speed’ barrier so often cited within the industry, how do digital twins provide a solution?

Especially on the planning side, there are many elements to planning and integrating new assets into the energy system.

When it comes to physical elements, we need to account for the effect on congestion, reliability, system stability and more.

All of these can be, and in many cases are, tackled by digital twins. What’s happening at the moment is integrating all of these different elements.

In the past, for example, congestion has been looked at using one part of a software package, or one twin rather. Then evaluation would go on to grid stability with another. A big part of the ongoing work today is integrating all those into one workflow or digital twin, which enables speedier decision making.

For example, someone goes to a system operator and says, “I want to attach a large solar farm to the network”. This can be added to an existing digital twin or model to see what the impact would be and then generate a response relatively quickly. Or, in a different scenario, all requested attachments can be looked at; those with the greatest merit can be selected based on specific criteria and permits can be accessed accordingly.

And this is done much quicker through a digital twin’s lens compared to the past. What this does is accelerate planning cycles and streamline operations accordingly.

With energy networks becoming more sophisticated and complicated, these processes are too much work without digital assistance.

In the past, when the main consideration was a couple of handfuls of big thermal assets being dispatched, the process could have been done relatively simply. But once there are thousands or millions of assets in the network, this is no longer the case.

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How can this tech support governments with scenario planning?

We had a really good conversation with the European Union recently and this relates to the importance of scenarios. The future is no longer a simple single path. It’s more like a statistical set of possible outcomes. There are many scenarios that could play out in the future and they’re all possible.

The question begs then of how best to run all possible scenarios of all possible futures to make sure the picked decision is the best one possible.

And one of the fascinating things illustrated by the case of the EU is that they had been running these scenarios, but they weren’t running ones that were ‘extreme’ enough.

They modelled what would happen if one of the gas pipelines to Russia was turned off, not what would happen if all of them were turned off and what the system would then look like.

Another case is that of the Australian energy market operator. Every month, they run 25,000 scenarios of what could happen over the next two years in the country’s energy system to see that the system will be going to be resilient under any given scenario to more than meet requirements.

And that’s how this powerful tool needs to be used. It’s not just a single look into the future. It’s running all scenarios to see the green ticks and make recommendations and decisions to best manage risk and ensure secure supply into the future.

ABOUT DAVID WILSON

David Wilson is CEO of Energy Exemplar. After completing a degree in mechanical engineering with a focus on thermodynamics at the University of Melbourne and spending 25 years in technical industries, Wilson joined the company in 2017.

Enzen, a global knowledge enterprise specialising in energy and water, has partnered with software company TOKN to launch ZenConnect – a customisable mobile solution to enable power, water and gas field operatives to access real-time information on network assets.

Assimilating data from different sources and systems, ZenConnect is hoped to offer asset, customer and supply chain teams a streamlined experience of utility assets.

The platform functions through a single interface enabling operatives access to location, site, performance and inspection history data, with the aim to improve workflow management, operational efficiency and productivity.

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Enzen cites the platform’s offering to utilities, including heightened data quality, more standardised, automated business systems and a more connected workforce.

Dina Williams, executive director and head of digital enterprise solutions and transformation at Enzen Australia, said: “There is a growing need in the Australian utilities market for a mobile enterprise solution that enables networks to transform their operations in line with the demands of the energy transition.

“The combination of Enzen’s deep domain utilities knowledge and TOKN’s innovative technology give power, water and gas networks a huge opportunity to accelerate their digitalisation at low cost.”

Clinton Schroeder, CEO and founder of TOKN, added: “Both our organisations have a common strategy to drive the digitalisation of enterprise in industry through…processes that deliver advantages in productivity, efficiency and safety.

“We’re looking forward to rolling out this customised, flexible solution for the Australian utilities market and beyond.”

The Au$5.4 million (US$3.6 million) project, supported with funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), is set to take place in South Australia and involve up to 20,000 customers.

The project will utilise Plus ES’s existing smart meters with SA Power Network’s time-of-use tariff, which is designed to encourage more consumption of electricity during the middle of the day when there is surplus solar generation.

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Plus ES, a New South Wales public-private initiative, is developing a control and integration portal to allow AGL Energy to access and manage the hot water systems of participating customers.

Specifically, two core flexibility use cases will be investigated – planned demand shifting with the hot water loads shifted dynamically for a predefined set period, and real-time demand shifting in which the loads are shifted based on predetermined business events including wholesale market price signals.

AGL chief customer officer Jo Egan said the learnings from this project should help consumers, other retailers and the broader market understand more about the benefits of retailer-orchestrated distributed resources.

“This project has tremendous opportunities for our customers, for AGL and for Plus ES’s smart meters across the market. As AGL dynamically manages hot water systems in South Australia for thousands of customers, we will be taking advantage of high renewable energy generation available during the day to test if this can help with grid stability and support a reduction in energy prices.”

With hot water systems considered a predictable load for residential customers and with more than 15GW of hot water systems across the National Electricity Market, the companies anticipate using the learnings from the project to advocate for wider recognition of the benefit of retailer orchestrated distributed energy resources for customers, retailers and the network.

Previously, used conductors had to be shipped overseas to have their outer aluminium layer removed to enable the entire line to be recycled but the ZAS system allows it to be done onsite.

The Australian TSO will be feeding conductors into the ZAS machine under tension. The outer aluminium layer will be removed and cut into 30-70mm pieces which are collected into large bags ready to be smelted into new products. Undamaged steel cores will be wound onto a cable drum at the other end, ready for recycling.

By using the technology Transgrid can cut 90% of emissions involved in recycling conductors.

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Field Coordinator Mitch Coppock, based in Newcastle, pitched the idea to Transgrid to use the system: “Everyone wins out of this solution. For Transgrid we can get a much higher return on the conductor as compared to current processes, the environment wins with reduced emissions and local businesses benefit too as they get readily available and processed aluminium.

“By eliminating the cost of offshore processing, Transgrid can achieve a return of three times on scrap metal rates of up to three dollars a kilogram.”

Over the next three to five years, the initiative is forecast to deliver upwards of AUD2 to AUD3 million ($1.4 – $2 million) in extra revenue from recycling.

“The trial has been successful so far. In under two weeks, we’ve run about 40km of conductors through the machine, yielding about a kilogram of aluminium per metre of conductor,” added Coppock.

The hub is being touted by the partners as the most advanced future energy transition hub of its kind in Australia.

Located at the University’s Hawthorn campus in Melbourne, the hub will feature advanced digital energy technology from Siemens and the technical, Research and Development (R&D) and teaching expertise of Swinburne.

The AU$5.2 million (US$3.6 million) hub aims to build a future energy grid laboratory accessible to students and industry to work on solutions for greener, more efficient future energy systems through Siemens Xcelerator, their open digital business platform and marketplace.

The hub’s offerings

The hub will enable users to leverage digital twins of energy grids, map scenarios, research new findings, develop original and creative hypotheses and test results.

It will be home to a digital twin of Australia’s energy grid that commercial research teams can use to run simulations of new, innovative solutions and software.

In addition to microgrid and planning stations, the hub will also feature Siemens’ Microgrid Management System (MGMS) and Decentralised Energy Optimization Platform (DEOP) software.

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The microgrid technologies include Sicam A8000 and Siprotec 5 devices for control and protection. The planning stations feature Siemens PSS software which is used by over 70% of utilities and independent system operators including AEMO and grid operators.

Deputy vice-chancellor, research, professor Karen Hapgood, stated, “Australia’s ambitious carbon reduction targets need a multi-pronged approach by industry, research and government.

“The new Siemens Swinburne Energy Transition Hub will be working on new technologies to improve energy efficiency, supply, integration, storage, transport and use, as well as how we can improve existing technologies and frameworks.”

Jose Moreira, country business unit head – grid software, Siemens Australia and New Zealand, added: “Tackling the speed and change in the energy landscape to create solutions that help achieve net zero requires a collaborative and co-creative approach…

“The Hub features some of the latest and best technology used by organisations across the world and will hopefully spark new Australian innovations for future energy challenges.”

In addition to R&D and commercialisation projects, the hub will deliver short courses for industry professionals. It will also give back to Swinburne students, with Siemens software and the company’s real-world industry experience integrated into engineering technology courses.

Electric ‘wallpaper’ to heat homes

A wafer-thin film that can be placed in ceilings, under floors or in panels for heating – that is what is being pursued by at least two British companies NexGen Heating and ‘living reinvented’ iHelios.

The films based on nanotechnology provide infrared heating to deliver an even distribution in the room with a reduced risk of air circulating allergens and are claimed to reduce the energy consumption of the property to almost 100% if also coupled with a solar PV and battery storage system.

The products are suitable for all property types, with iHelios stating that full heat temperature is typically reached in 5 minutes and just 20 minutes of running time every hour is required to maintain a constant temperature.

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In the three years in the market iHelios reports having done more than one thousand installations while NexGen reports installations as far afield as France, Germany, Spain and Switzerland.

“It’s not often that you come across a truly game changing piece of tech (think a ‘horse and cart to car’ style development),” NexGen quotes Octopus Energy in reference to its technology on its website.

Hydrogen from seawater

Hydrogen production requires water and that is currently costly as the water needs to be pure, which can involve deionisation or desalinisation, and could even impact fresh water resources with large scale production.

But that may be about to change with new research on the most abundant water resource on the globe, seawater, demonstrating that direct electrolysis is possible without the need for the addition of any alkalis or acids.

The research led by Professors Shizhang Qiao and Yao Zheng from the University of Adelaide’s School of Chemical Engineering reported splitting natural seawater into oxygen and hydrogen with nearly 100% to produce green hydrogen by electrolysis with the key a chromium oxide coated cobalt oxide catalyst.

With the performance similar to that a typical electrolyser with platinum/iridium catalysts operating in high purity water, the technique offers potential for green hydrogen production in regions with long coastlines and abundant sunlight.

Before it can be commercialised further work is required to manage the complexities of using seawater, such as corrosion, and the research team are now planning to scale up their system with a larger electrolyser.

Ozone layer under threat?

The discovery of the so-called ‘ozone hole’ over Antarctica was one of the early indicators of humankind’s impact on the climate and in turn led to the ban of ozone destroying chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which were commonly used in aerosols and refrigeration.

Over the intervening almost 40 years, the ozone layer has started to ‘heal’. But – and staying ‘down under’ – University of Christchurch researchers suggest that process may come under threat from the rapidly growing space industry and the increasing number of rocket launches.

While the full impact of emissions from rockets are not known and the impact to date is estimated to be small, the researchers suggest a need for more measurements and for some policy intervention into an area that is not currently regulated.

“Rockets have exciting potential to enable industrial-level access to near-Earth space, and exploration throughout the solar system. Creating sustainable global rocket launches is going to take coordination across aerospace companies, scientists, and governments: it is achievable, but we need to start now,” says Dr Michele Bannister of the University’s School of Physical & Chemical Science.

mPrest, which develops grid-aware Distributed Energy Resource Management Systems (DERMS) for utilities, and Energy Queensland, one of Australia’s largest wholly government-owned electricity companies, announced the partnership with the aim of optimising energy use.

The distribution utility-focused DERMS project aims to optimise and orchestrate energy from over one million DERs and DER and load control programmes.

“The Australian market is an advanced and fully deregulated renewable energy market,” said Ron Halpern, mPrest’s chief commercial officer. “Such a scenario, of Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) and DER energy trading with the energy market, combined with Australia’s high DER penetration, introduces distribution grid constraint challenges. 

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“We’re excited to implement within our mDERMS Dynamic Operating Envelopes (DOEs) – which are power envelopes that the distribution utility can apply to grid imports and exports, thus enabling dynamic management of grid constraints with minimal impacts on customers. We expect this model to be adopted in other regions around the world as well.”

According to mPrest, with the mDERMS suite, Queensland Energy will be able to manage DERs against existing loads and better channel energy to areas of high demand and away from areas of high supply.

As more renewables come online, grid systems become more stressed and require more coordinated management to ensure stability.

Queensland’s adoption of the DER software is thus hoped to alleviate stress on the system, enhance operational efficiencies and improve reliability.

mPrest also cites mDERMS integrates with third party demand response, virtual power plants and microgrid management systems, as well as with SCADA, distribution and advanced distribution management systems.

Shell plans to build, own and operate this Wallerawang 9 battery, which will sit within the Wallerawang power station site, where two 500MW coal-fired generating units were decommissioned in 2014.

The battery is being developed by Greenspot, a privately owned NSW group, which was established to acquire and repurpose property assets primarily from the fossil fuel industry.

Shell Energy will be responsible for the grid connection process and, subject to a final investment decision, is planning to build, own and operate the battery on 20 hectares of land to be leased from Greenspot. A further 200 hectares of the 620-hectare site has been identified by Greenspot as an employment hub for a range of future facing and high-tech industries.

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“The greater Lithgow region has contributed to powering NSW for nearly 70 years,” said Greenspot CEO Brett Hawkins. “As the economy decarbonises, and new energy technologies are adopted, it is critically important that strategies are implemented to attract a range of new businesses to areas like Lithgow which have traditionally relied heavily on coal-based industry.”

Shell Energy chief executive officer Greg Joiner emphasised the importance of battery energy storage within the energy transition, as it is a key asset for supporting renewable generation and “contributing to improved reliability for the grid and consumers.”

Greenspot obtained development approval for the BESS, which will connect to the adjacent 330kV Wallerawang Substation, which has historically facilitated the transmission of coal-fired electricity generation to the grid.

“Proximity to the high-voltage transmission network, access to major road, rail transport and significant existing and proposed water infrastructure, and proximity to high-integrity data networks, makes the Wallerawang site highly competitive to attract the investment needed to propel the local economy forward,” added Hawkins.