A Canberra big battery is being launched by Energy Consumers Australia chief executive Rosemary Sinclair ahead of a challenging summer for the electricity grid.

More than 250 Canberra households are synchronising their solar battery systems to sell energy back to the grid as Reposit Power and ActewAGL Distribution switch on the virtual big battery, which will deliver one megawatt of power.

“Today we’re proving that a virtual big battery can not only support the grid at times of peak demand, like the South Australian big battery but also empower consumers to take advantage of price spikes on the grid,” says Reposit Power chief executive Dean Spaccavento.

“Households will earn $1 in GridCredits for each kWh they discharge, which is about nine times the current available solar feed-in-tariff in Canberra. The advantage of creating a virtual big battery is that they can be built anywhere, homeowners across Australia can be part of it and taxpayers aren’t left with the bill.”

As the virtual big battery is switched on, Reposit Power will also launch Reposit Fleet, software that makes building virtual big batteries easy.

Dean says that Australia is going through an energy revolution, with half of all electricity generation expected to be sourced from homes and businesses in the future. Reposit Fleet will provide electricity companies with a platform to harness this energy revolution.

“With Reposit’s new platform, electricity companies can use a collection of Reposit systems to deliver electricity to the grid at very short notice.”

Rooftop solar is growing at approximately 100MW per month, which indicates the enormous potential of virtual big batteries.

“Unlike the South Australian big battery, when the virtual big battery isn’t performing demand response, each individual battery goes back to supporting its household with solar after dark,” says Dean.