AGL has announced an expansion of its Virtual Power Plant (VPP) with the launch of solar battery sales and installations for residential customers in three states.
AGL General Manager Decentralised Energy Resources, Dominique Van Den Berg, said AGL would install solar batteries in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, and solar and battery bundles would be available before the end of 2020.
“AGL’s VPP program started in 2016 in Adelaide as a network of connected solar batteries which are called upon to provide energy when the grid needs it,” Ms Van Den Berg said.
“Last year it was expanded to include customers from other states with a solar battery, but this is the first time we have sold and installed batteries at scale outside South Australia.
“Customers in Queensland, NSW and Victoria will be able to buy Tesla batteries or LG Chem batteries with Solar Edge hardware at discounted prices if they join our VPP program.
“By joining AGL’s VPP program, customers receive payments for allowing AGL access to their batteries at key times during the year to help improve grid reliability, making the decision to invest in batteries more attractive.
“This is an exciting demonstration of the sharing economy in which we create value by using customers’ distributed energy assets like batteries and sharing the value with them.”
Ms Van Den Berg said expanding the VPP would help AGL to achieve its target of having 350MW of distributed and demand response assets under orchestration by FY24.
“AGL is investing not only in small-scale batteries like those in the VPP, but also grid-scale batteries to provide the firming capacity that the energy market needs for the transition from coal to renewables and the decarbonisation of the economy,” Ms Van Den Berg said.
“In doing so we are delivering on the commitments in our Climate Statement, including investing in renewable and flexible generation backed by storage technologies, providing customers what they are seeking and supporting the transition to a low-carbon economy.”
