Q&A with Chris Cormack: What role can VPPs play in Australia's energy transition?

In this interview, Chris Cormack, Executive General Manager, Discover Energy, discusses the potential of virtual power plants and related technology in shaping the future of Australia’s networks and grids.

What are VPPs and how do they work?

Virtual power plants are collections of solar and battery customers who provide services to the network and grid and are responsive to wholesale energy price movements. Discover Energy’s VPP provides the software to do this and shares the value of providing these services with our customers.

How would an average suburban family home that relies on energy from fossil fuels go about making the conversion to green energy sources?

Firstly, the key is to install solar PV, although we would suggest only enough for your own consumption, as given the increased prevalence of solar in our energy grid the price of the energy generated from solar is decreasing and so are the feed-in tariffs that reward solar PV generation.

A battery or, in time, an electric vehicle, will allow the household to store its solar energy — even store other renewable sources such as wind power — and output it at times when the household requires. Installation of other demand response technology for controlling hot water, air conditioning or pool pumps will ensure the household uses energy at times when there is abundant renewable energy.

What role can smart tech/devices (for example, Discover Energy’s DE Box) have in creating more efficient energy usage for consumers?

One example of smart technology can be used to ensure that the household uses solar energy to ‘pre-cool’ the house in summer by running the air conditioner from solar earlier in the day. Discover Energy’s smart APIs (application programming interfaces) will allow a multitude of battery and inverter systems to be used to store renewable energy to use at times when the household requires it — or to sell back to the grid for others to use.

DE currently has a project underway involving EVs — what part can electric vehicles play in our energy networks?

Electric vehicles (EVs) can play a key role in two different areas — firstly, by increasing consumption across the grid it will effectively decrease the cost of recovering largely fixed network costs; as long as networks can ensure that EVs are not charging at peak times. Discover Energy’s Super Charge program effectively allows customers to do just that and to reap the benefits.

The other potential benefit of EVs will be when vehicle to grid (V2G) technology allows owners to draw energy from the battery of their vehicles for their own consumption — offsetting potentially expensive energy consumption OR providing energy to the grid at peak times just as Discover Energy’s VPP does today.

What alternative generation sources does the DE VPP draw on?

The DE VPP draws heavily on customers’ own solar PV generation, but increasingly we are encouraging customers to keep battery capacity available to draw from the grid at times of high solar and wind generation. This helps us manage the grid and encourage greater renewable penetration, by purchasing what would have been wasted energy in some cases and providing that energy back into the grid at times when generation may be scarce and prices high.

Also by providing services such as frequency control ancillary services (FCAS) or voltage management the DE VPP effectively allows for more renewable energy to be connected into our system. It’s only small now but the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) predicts more than 50% of customers will have these resources installed by 2030.

Chris Cormack

Top image credit: iStock.com/BeyondImages