Funding, Renewables, Solar, Storage

Industry partners sign on for trial of deX renewable energy trading platform

Thirty-seven industry partners will support the rollout of the decentralised energy exchange (deX), a software platform that will allow consumers who store their own renewable energy through home batteries to sell their excess electricity back to the grid.

The deX aims to reduce electricity bills while assisting the network to manage grid reliability and reduce the need to upgrade infrastructure.

The deX is a digital marketplace that allows home and commercial building-based energy assets and appliances such as batteries, air conditioners and fridges to be bid into the market to be used for a range of grid services such as reducing network energy constraints.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) announced $450,000 in funding to pilot the innovative and new digital marketplace that was formed during ARENA’s inaugural A-Lab innovation session. The deX platform helps the electricity network understand where electricity is coming from, how much is needed and sets the price.

Industry partners involved in the first A-Lab session to create the deX project are GreenSync (lead), Reposit Power, Mojo Power, United Energy, ActewAGL, Australian National University and the ACT Government.

The pilot will take place across two network locations (United Energy in the Mornington Peninsula and ActewAGL in Canberra) and seeks to test the ability of deX to meet peak demand issues, and demonstrate how market-integrated batteries might address grid constraints.

GreenSync CEO Dr Phil Blythe said that the participation from industry showed that the deX approach had industry-wide support.

“This is the first time that industry has come together in this way,” Dr Blythe said.

“This is an opportunity born from our current energy crisis, deX provides a framework to increase customer value, improve system reliability and manage the transition to a renewable energy supply.”

The deX pilot was formed as part of ARENA’s A-Lab inaugural session and is the first project to have be trialed in the Australian Energy Market.

A-Lab is ARENA’s award winning grid integration innovation lab and draws on a network of people with a wide range of expertise to drive systemic change in the electricity sector.

It has facilitated collaboration across the electricity sector and aimed to develop innovative experiments and projects to drive the integration of renewable energy into the power system.

“deX is a fantastic solution to providing peer-to-grid network pricing and will allow renewable assets to be traded back into the grid and enable value transfer between participants in ways not previously possible,” Frischknecht said.

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