A trial of a new distributed energy marketplace is to be conducted to allow energy generated ‘behind-the-meter’ to be traded into the National Electricity Market (NEM).
The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) said the trial, Project Edge, would allow the trading of aggregated electricity services from energy devices in peoples’ homes and businesses.
AEMO said the trial would recruit an initial group of 50 residential, commercial and industrial customers from across Victoria’s north-east to allow visibility and control of their distributed energy assets.
“The trial will enable large numbers of individual rooftop solar systems, home batteries, EVs and other distributed energy resources (DER) to be aggregated to participate in wholesale energy markets and provide grid services,” AEMO said.
“After the initial phase, Project Edge will be scaled up to 1,000 customers to develop a model that can be replicated and expanded across the NEM,” it said.
AEMO said the three-year trial would create Australia’s first real-world prototype DER marketplace.
It said the prototype would use customers’ energy assets to boost resilience and reliability in the network by reducing demand or increasing energy supply when there were shocks to the system.
“With permission from customers, registered market participants will be able to remotely control the distributed resources to respond to signals from the new distributed energy marketplace for wholesale or local network services,” it said.
AEMO said aggregators would use the capability to optimise household energy use in the first instance, and deliver a market service only when there was a strong price signal.
