A ground-breaking mini-grid trial by Victorian network operator AusNet Services has, for the third time, taken part of a Melbourne street completely off grid – this time for a period of almost 22 hours.
In a project update posted last week, AusNet said the mini-grid, comprising 17 households on a suburban street in Mooroolbark, was “seamlessly” disconnected from the grid and, for 21 hours, powered only by the collective solar and battery storage systems installed on 14 of the homes.
The achievement is the latest for AusNet’s Mooroolbark Mini Grid Trial, which aims to demonstrate how utilities can harness concentrated pockets of distributed generation to help optimise the performance of the grid, while also delivering what customers need: a reliable, and cheaper, electricity supply.
In December, the utility managed to keep the 17-home mini-grid islanded for 9 hours running, improving on its first experiment, in May 2017, which successfully separated eight homes from the grid – two without solar and storage – before reintegrating them seamlessly.
The trial is based around what AusNet calls DENOP – a Distributed Energy Network Optimisation Platform – a cloud based software layer which operates in conjunction with a control platform to orchestrate the activities of the mini-grid’s distributed solar and storage resources.
Speaking at the ABB Customer World forum in Melbourne on Thursday, AusNet’s Alistair Parker said it was one of a “plethora” of technologies, and grid-based solutions, that would help deliver a National Electricity Network of 50 per cent renewables, and beyond.
“We have a really proven ability there to handle the technical aspects of stability in a mini-grid,” he said. “We’re also starting to play around with whether that can feed, for want of a better term, synthetic inertia, back into the system, and help with wider stability.”
Perhaps even more importantly, though, Parker said the Mooroolbark trial had laid down invaluable groundwork on successfully engaging with consumers, and communities, to solve energy problems.
“We switched (the mini-grid) off from the grid, seamlessly, and we saw how long it would run for,” said Parker, who is executive general manager of regulated energy services at the network.
“We had a bit of a book within the company, some bets on how long it would go,” Parker told the conference.
“We were hoping for 24 hours, we only go to 21 hours because, unfortunately, somebody came back from work to a very hot house, switched the air-con on, and that sort of ran through a bit more energy than were hoping.
“But I think that’s the reality, that these things have to fit in around people’s lives, not to make everybody into an energy expert,” he said.
“We can envisage a future where distribution networks actually help support the transmission network and support their own needs.”
Sophie is editor of One Step Off The Grid and deputy editor of its sister site, Renew Economy. Sophie has been writing about clean energy for more than a decade.
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“…somebody came back from work to a very hot house, switched the air-con on…” Either the cumulative batteries are too small, or the guy’s aircon is so massive and set to freeze mode. My house only has 3kW panel with PW2 and can run independently from the grid pretty much entire summer, except those super hot days and cloudy. Not to mention I have an EV as well. Typical consumption so far (in summer) is low tens of kWh (no need grid), and when the weather gets really hot and humid, it goes well above 20-ish kWh (that’s when it’s not enough). Mine is a small house though, so even the air-con doesn’t work too hard.
And nobody told the guy to put the aircon on a timer, start it up about 2.30 when the panels are pumping and before the house gets too hot. Set it at 25°, not to big a task. By home time, the house is pleasant cf the 38° outside.
Well guess which house didn’t have solar and batteries?
If your going to do a mini grid trial, at least design the parameters where it is likely to succeed!
If I had anything to do with the design, it would have worked for 21 days rather than 21 hrs at not that much extra cost.