As the national EV revolution gathers pace and homeowners increasingly rush to install rooftop solar, eleXsys Energy co-founder and executive director, Richard Romanowski, has called on a more modern electricity network to meet the demands of tomorrow.

He says that the creation of a smart, connected distribution grid instead of our current ‘one-way street’ network would enable the uptake of sustainable EV technology by Australian consumers to accelerate into the fast lane and beyond.

“This would help resolve our current predicament which sees distribution networks failing to enable the efficient two-way flow of energy as more of our electricity is generated at multiple points – including domestic rooftops – and then ‘shared’ on the network,” Richard says.

The challenge is to transform Australia’s legacy on-way grids into two-way smart grids without spending billions of dollars on infrastructure and equipment upgrades – and eleXsys Energy has the solution.

eleXsys Energy has created an advanced power electronics device with integrated artificial intelligence software applications that enable clean energy producers to feed multiple times more energy back into existing electricity distribution grids than was previously possible.

“Now is the time to leverage smart technologies and business models, such as eleXsys, for distributed energy resources (DER) that improve networks,” Richard adds.

“We need to accelerate the widespread adoption of DER as opposed to being stuck in an endless cycle of trials, evaluations, and pilot schemes.”

Mr Romanowski also made a compelling case for batteries to support DER across networks, echoing the US Energy Storage Association’s conclusion that storage would play a critical role in making electricity services resilient in the face of heat waves, fires, storms and other extreme climate events.

“Distributed energy storage provides clean and resilient power while reducing peak demand on the system, which creates financial savings for utilities, businesses and domestic consumers alike,” he said.

“Surely the days of investing in single-use infrastructure are gone. Infrastructure that provides multiple services represents the best value for money for governments and investors.”

Richard was among the guest speakers at the Smart Energy Queensland Conference hosted by the Smart Energy Council at Brisbane’s Royal International Convention Centre on 14 September 2022.