ACEnergy has revealed plans to set up a portfolio of distribution-scale battery energy storage systems (BESS) in regional Australia, with the initial 50MW/100MWh distribution battery portfolio currently undergoing planning studies with sites selected across Victoria and NSW.

Having assembled an expert team across the development value chain, from land acquisition to grid connection and operation and maintenance, ACEnergy says it has picked locations where BESS can work in concert with local grid demand.

By coordinating their operation according to the local network demand profile, the distributed BESS should increase network capacity, alleviating curtailment of distributed energy resources (DER) like rooftop solar systems and benefiting local households with systems installed.

The company is also calling for industry collaboration to introduce reforms that will expedite the rollout of renewable energy projects. This would include reforming the current tariff structure which would support further implementation of BESS to benefit regional communities and maximise existing renewable energy assets.

Another opportunity is the reform of the current connection process used by networks that don’t fully recognise the capabilities of storage systems. The assessment criteria currently focus on battery charge demand occurring during times of network peak demand which ACEnergy says is highly unlikely to happen in practice, as batteries will typically charge when demand is low but generation is high.