An Australian utility’s Distributed Energy Resource (DER) trials have been presented with a prestigious award at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting held in Chile.
The joint silver award was presented to Horizon Power, and its project partner Murdoch University, for its Carnarvon DER trials as part of the Energy Smart Communities Initiatives’ (ESCI) Best Practice Awards, in the category of smart grids.
The DER trials, which commenced in 2018, are being conducted in the regional West Australian town of Carnarvon, some 900km north of Perth, and will run over a three-year period.
David Edwards, Horizon Power’s Technical Visionary, said data was being collected and analysed from 82 households to study the variation of solar PV generation with cloud movement.
“The trials involve investigating the management of renewable energy and energy storage on a selected segment of the power grid in Carnarvon,” Mr Edwards said.
“Data is being collected from the participants’ systems and analysed by Murdoch University to help Horizon Power design and manage networks with high levels of distributed energy, and reduce dependence on centralised fossil-fuelled generation.”
The trials, partly funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, could represent the future of energy generation in remote and regional areas.
