AGL to roll out virtual power plants in NSW, Victoria and Queensland
AGL Energy will offer bundled solar and battery systems to customers in Australia’s biggest states after a pilot project in South Australia.
AGL Energy will offer bundled solar and battery systems to customers in Australia’s biggest states following a pilot project in South Australia as the power giant targets 350 megawatts of power capacity generated from homes and businesses by 2024.
Virtual power plants — where a network of small-scale solar and battery systems can be controlled and fed into the electricity grid — will be rolled out in NSW, Victoria and Queensland.
Customers can buy Tesla or LG Chem batteries with SolarEdge rooftop solar systems at discounted prices if they join AGL’s virtual power plant scheme, marking the first time it has sold and installed batteries at scale outside South Australia.
“By joining AGL’s VPP program, customers receive payments for allowing AGL access to their batteries at key times during the year to help improve grid reliability, making the decision to invest in batteries more attractive,” said Dominique Van Den Berg, AGL’s general manager decentralised energy resources.
A VPP covers hundreds or even thousands of homes each with solar panels where excess energy is stored in batteries. Instead of operating just as a single household, energy stored in the batteries is made available in unison to the grid at times of peak load or an outage.
An energy retailer can then manage the flow of battery power back to the grid and consumers self-manage their stored solar power at other times.
AGL first rolled out the system in South Australia in 2017 and its virtual power plant produces 10MW of power in the state with over 1000 homes now connected to the project.
AGL hopes to ultimately reach a target of 350MW of “behind the metre” resources such as solar, batteries, pool pumps and electric vehicle chargers by 2024.
Demand response will also play a part by allowing large consumers of power to receive a financial benefit from cutting their own energy use when demand and wholesale prices are high, sending surplus energy back to the grid.
“AGL is investing not only in small scale batteries like those in the VPP but also grid-scale batteries to provide the firming capacity that the energy market needs for the transition from coal to renewables and the decarbonisation of the economy,” Ms Van Den Berg said.
AGL also said in August it plans to convert its Liddell coal power station in NSW’s Hunter Valley into a site housing a giant battery system as it moves closer to shutting down the ageing plant in the 2022-23 summer.
The power operator has devised a scheme to install 850MW of large-scale batteries across its operations with a 500MW battery system at Liddell alongside the existing coal plant which has 1680MW capacity. AGL expects the first phase of the Liddell battery system will be 150MW by 2024 but will target receiving planning consent for 500MW overall.