On behalf of the Australian Government, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has announced it is providing $1.02 million in funding to SA Power Networks, alongside partner retailers AGL and Simply Energy.

The funding is to develop and trial the capability for retailer solar management offers to work in concert with networks’ flexible connection offers to enable a seamless experience for customers with Consumer Energy Resources.

While rooftop solar is the largest generator in South Australia, most systems are not responsive to market signals. Retailers Simply Energy and AGL aim to change that with innovative offers that reward customers for enabling their solar to be responsive to wholesale energy market pricing.

The focus of the $2.1 million project will initially be on helping inform the design of the integration between these new customer offers and SA Power Networks’ Flexible Export connections for rooftop solar, which will be progressively rolled out as a standard service offering from July 2023.

Combining flexible export connections with innovative retail market offers aims to maximise the opportunity for customers to participate in the market while ensuring power flows don’t exceed the technical limits of the network. In the future, there is the potential to extend this approach to support other “behind-the-meter” equipment (Consumer Energy Resources or CER), such as batteries and even electric vehicles.

If successful, the solutions developed could be adopted in other states in the National Electricity Market and potentially unlock wholesale market and network benefits.

ARENA CEO Darren Miller says the smart management of rooftop solar is a potential long-term solution to ever-increasing amounts of renewable energy entering the market.

“SA Power Networks’ project represents a small, but focused trial that will help inform the design of future mechanisms for the orchestration of rooftop solar PV as well as other customer-owned energy assets,” he says.

“By having retail customers from AGL Energy and Simply Energy involved, this will highlight how Australia’s growing solar PV capacity can be managed in a way that delivers state-wide benefits.”