300 houses power WA virtual power plant pilot
Hundreds of Western Australian customers are taking part in the state’s largest Virtual Power Plant.
Project Symphony involves more than 300 customers and 650 customer-owned distributed energy resources (DER).
The pilot program, which is due to run until mid-to-late 2023, will initially take place in Harrisdale, Piara Waters and Forrestdale. These suburbs have embraced renewable energy in a big way with over 50 per cent of homes having rooftop solar. By testing new opportunities and technologies in these areas, the pilot will help discover how existing DER assets can be used to manage system security and achieve environmental benefits for the WA community.
It is result of almost two years of collaboration and system development between the Western Australian Government, Western Power, Synergy and The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO). Project Symphony will test how customer resources, including rooftop solar, batteries and appliances like air conditioning, can be orchestrated to unlock greater economic and environmental benefits.
This milestone marks the completion of the build and integration of the technology platforms, with the VPP entering a ‘stability period’ enabling the project to commence scenario testing to determine the services and potential value that the VPP can offer its customers, the power system and the wider community.
Testing is now underway for two of the scenarios in a simulated Wholesale Electricity Market (WEM) where over 200 customer energy assets have been successfully ‘orchestrated’ as a single facility. These include Wholesale Energy Services where the VPP bids and dispatches in real time whilst Network Support Services helps manage local voltage to improve network reliability.
The number of assets will continue to scale with a Constrain to Zero scenario scheduled for testing in December and Contingency Raise frequency service following early in the new year.
Rigorous testing of all the scenarios will continue until April 2023 with key outcomes to be published by the end of 2023.
Master Electricians Australia has welcomed this trial. MEA has advocated for increased use of DER to projects to increase grid resilience and better utilise household generation.
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