Pole-mounted community battery trials roll out in regional Australia

NSW-owned electricity infrastructure company Essential Energy (EE) has partnered with retailer Origin Energy to roll out 35 pole-mounted community batteries to five NSW regional cities to trial peak demand management using local rooftop solar systems.

More than 27% of Essential Energy’s customers have installed solar on their rooftops, a figure which the company forecasts will increase to more than 60% by 2037.

EE will install and maintain the 30 kVA/65 kWh Ecostore pole-mounted community batteries provided by Queensland-headquartered Ecojoule Energy.

Under EE’s two-year Pole-Mounted Battery Trial, the company has partnered with Origin to orchestrate the batteries through its virtual power plant (VPP).

Origin will also offer storage-as-a-service for customers with or without solar systems, including non-Origin customers in the trial areas.

Providing 2.5 MWh of total capacity for approximately 600 customers, the batteries have most recently been installed at Wagga Wagga in the state’s southern Riverina region.

Installations will follow in the mid north coastal city of Port Macquarie, the northern tablelands city of Armidale and western region cities of Bathurst and Dubbo.

EE Chief Operating Officer Luke Jenner said the batteries are connected to the electricity grid to service nearby homes.

“The purpose of the trial is to understand firstly, technically, how the batteries work and understand how we can install them safely and make sure they’re reliable in the community and also to understand what the community’s reactions are to having the battery in the community,” Jenner said. “Wagga Wagga was chosen for the trial because it’s a great location to put the batteries. There is an excess of solar energy throughout the day and we can use the batteries to store that energy and then reuse it later on. The benefit of a pole mounted battery is that allows customers to generate, store, and then use their own renewable energy locally within their community.”

The Ecostore is a three-phase battery energy storage system (BESS) consisting of three pole mounted cabinets, each containing a 10 kVA/21.9 kWh BESS with separate inverters per phase which allow for unbalanced operation and advanced grid support.

The battery solution contains five series-connected Kokam KBM255 1p14S 4.7 kWh lithium-ion battery modules and a Kokam battery management system.

From pv magazine Australia.