What does it mean to control many Small Solar and Loads?

With the days of the premium feed tariffs behind us it’s generally best to ensure that as much solar generation as possible is used on site before the excess is sent to the grid. This will maximise the benefits of solar. In order to do this, it may be necessary to automate and control small loads at an individual site, or even between sites within a community, to soak up any excess solar before it is sent to the wider grid.

This might involve installing simple switching devices to turn equipment such as air conditioners, hot water or irrigation systems on when there is excess solar available, and can even involve more complicated technologies like a hot water diversion system that can match the power being produced with the hot water equipment load. This same control equipment can be used to turn equipment off when there is not enough solar or battery power available.

Benefits of setting up a system to control many small solar systems and loads

• Improved utilisation of the available renewable energy.

• Reduced costs to run equipment through automation to run on renewable or lower cost energy.

• Ability to control equipment at a site or community level to balance of renewable energy across many customers.

Some challenges of setting up a system to control many small solar systems and loads

• Devices with control capabilities need to be investigated and tested. There might be some solutions available that only work with a single vendor or brand and others that don’t work together.

• The control equipment may add substantial costs at the time of installation.

• In order to control many small solar and battery systems, it’s likely that you’ll need an aggregator. See MyTown Energy information on working with an aggregator.

When is setting up a community system to control many small solar systems and loads a good idea?

• When are limitations on the amount of power available in a community that might require non-essential equipment to be disconnected until more power becomes available.

• When there is excess power available in a community that could be stored or used elsewhere on a site or a community.

Project examples

King Island Power System As a remote island community, King Island is not connected to a mainland electricity supply. Electricity was generated entirely from diesel fuel from a 6 megawatt (MW) power station, with 12 gigawatt hours (GWh) of annual customer demand peaking at 2.5 MW. The King Island Renewable Integration Project (KIREIP) was an initiative of Hydro Tasmania to develop a hybrid off-grid power system to supply 65% of King Island’s energy needs using renewable energy. The system is capable of 100% renewable operation.

Shifted Energy ( Hawaii) This startup turns electric water heaters into grid batteries, starting in Hawaii.

WA Distributed Energy Resources Orchestration Pilot (Project Symphony) - Is piloting the orchestration of customer-owned distributed energy resources (DER) such as rooftop solar, batteries and major appliances to participate in a future energy market.

WEL Networks DERMS pilot case study - Outlines the first phase of a pilot which explores the viability of using a Distributed Energy Resource Management System to alleviate grid congestion and stability issues. The software solution uses a combination of on-premise and cloud-based software that communicates with various distributed energy resources (solar, battery and EV) over a cellular network, while ingesting and integrating power network data.

Other guides and resources

ABB Overview of Load Management Systems - Load management devices are a simple and reliable solution for monitoring network performance. The resulting transparency enables timely intervention to ensure plant availability.