Energy storage as a service gets underway near Bondi Beach, Australia
Ausgrid has delivered a ninth community battery to residential customers commissioning a 160 kW / 412 kWh battery near Bondi Beach in Sydney, designed to soak up consumer-generated solar and help stabilise the local grid.
The battery is part of the Community Batteries for Household Solar Program run by the Australian government, aiming to store excess solar power generated from residential rooftops, while offering reliability, voltage control, reverse power flows, and energy resilience in the face of natural disasters via localalized batteries.
The Bondi battery, which also includes an electric vehicle charger, is the first from Ausgrid to offer an energy storage as a service (ESaaS) retail plan. Ausgrid Chief Executive Officer Marc England said this marks a “step change” in the evolution of community batteries.
“ESaaS allows multiple eligible customers to use community batteries in a similar way to a household battery but without the upfront costs,” he said.
“It’s a fundamental shift in one of the ways in which we’re engaging customers in this, because what this allows us to do is to pass through to them a lower grid charge for the customers in this area when they engage them in their electricity, and that’s a step change in how this industry works.”
England said enabling customers to store electricity locally reduced their reliability on the wider grid and could also help apply downward pressure on energy prices.
“Eligible customers in the vicinity of Ausgrid’s community batteries use the network less and therefore pay less in network charges, potentially saving them hundreds of dollars per year,” he said.
The company publishes maps of where eligible customers must be located to use each community battery, which depends on how the local distribution network is laid out, with proximity also key.
Ausgrid said the ESaaS retail plan will be offered in collaboration with retailers Energy Australia and Origin under a trial tariff and is available to all eligible residential customers connected to any Ausgrid community battery on an opt-in basis.
“This approach can deliver cost savings for consumers, improve grid reliability, facilitate greater integration of renewable energy and support home electrification,” Ausgrid said.
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