WILL A “SUN TAX” SLOW DOWN ROOFTOP INSTALLATIONS?

Look around the suburbs and you will see rooftop solar PV installations have taken off. But Australia’s love of using the sun to power our homes has led to increased pressure being put on the distribution network. The high share of intermittent generation on the network, such as rooftop PV, has seen network operators warn consumers of an increased risk of congestion on the grid and possible blackouts. The increase congestion and the increase risk of blackout has led to the call for more market reform.

As part of ARENA’s Distributed Energy Integration Program, the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) have rolled out their next phase of market reform in response to the increase congestion on the distribution network. The proposed changes include:

  • Changing distribution power networks’ existing incentives to provide services that help people send power back into the grid
  • Officially recognising energy export as a service to the power system.
  • Allowing power networks to develop new tariff options including two-way pricing.
  • Flexible pricing solutions at the network level.

The latest raft of reforms are designed to allow more solar and new tech energy into the grid. But Solar advocates have focused on the rule change that will allow distributors to charge solar households to export power.

Solar advocates have labelled the new legislation a “Sun tax” and have called upon state energy Ministers to “protect solar owners from this discriminatory charge’’.  The proposed reform, released for consultation last week, has been labelled a ‘‘sun tax’’ by community interest group Solar Citizens. Solar Citizens also called on state energy Ministers to ‘‘protect solar owners from this discriminatory charge”. It must be highlighted that this legislation is not a tax, and the new energy rule will include extra safeguards to ensure existing and new solar customers – and non-solar customers – are protected. The proposal does not mandate default charges for exporting power.

Market participants, including the distribution companies, agree the proposed reforms will allow more rooftop solar systems and batteries. This reform will also allow the smarter use of the network with distributed energy resources (DER) linking together to optimise the grid. This reform will enable more DER and how DER is managed. Currently as high levels of rooftop solar PV generation increase distribution companies restrict the power exported to prevent voltage spikes, frequency changes and in some cases blackouts.

Modelling by the AEMC shows a typical household with a roof top PV could lose out on $70 each year if this market reform goes through. The AEMC modelling also showed the reforms could impact around 20% of households. 80% of households will be no worse off and many may be better off by $15 as they would not be paying for the higher cost of distribution associated with building a grid to accommodate excess solar energy.

The AEMC have highlighted that these reforms are fairer as late adopters of rooftop PV are not disadvantaged with the current “first in, best dressed” structure.  AEMC CEO Ben Barr emphasised that the proposal would not mean that every kilowatt of energy exported into the grid would be charged, he believes distributors to offer a variety of options for solar households, which could include free exports up to a certain limit.

Energy Consumers Australia, which represents retail energy users, said the proposed reform was only the first step in a process that needed to focus on talking to consumers and putting their needs first.

Edge News – March 2021 Newsletter

If your business isn’t looking at renewable backed energy deals, you are fast becoming the minority. All major market retailers and generators are seeing an exponential increase in enquiries for renewable backed energy deals and are scrambling to service this.

We only hope ownership remains diversified and we continue to see retail products take shape for smaller C&I and multi-SME consumers. They need access to renewables as much as the largest users.

WHO WERE AUSTRALIA’S TOP EMITTERS?

Last Thursday the Clean Energy Regulator (CER) published the latest National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting (NGER) data outlining the largest 400 emitters across Australia.

As expected, Australia’s energy companies ranked highest in the list with AGL leading the list, with greenhouse gas emission reported as 42.2 million tonnes of scope-1 emissions for 2020 financial year. AGLs emitter was more than double that of the second highest emitter Energy Australia, at 17.9 million tonnes.

Other high emitters included:

  • Origin Energy with 16 million tonnes
  • Stanwell Corporation and CS Energy emitting a combined 30.3 million tonnes.

Following the list dominated by thermal generation came the oil and gas producers.

  • Chevron Australia emissions equaling 10.2 million tonnes
  • Woodside Petroleum reported 9.2 million tonnes
  • Santos emitting 7.3 million tonnes

As AGL owns the oldest and dirtiest power stations due to the fuel they burn, it is not surprising they top the list of emitters with 8% of Australian greenhouse gas emissions.

AGLs largest emitting stations was the brown coal fired Loy Yang A coal power station with 16.7 million tonnes and Bayswater Power Station at (14.0 million tonnes), which burns black coal.

With the release of these results, it will put increased pressure on the retailers to clean up their generation by moving towards renewable generation.

 

Emission reductions have changed across various sectors in the 2019-20 year, which was mostly due the impact of COVID-19 however as seen below the electricity generation sector had continued a historic trend of reduced emissions due to the higher penetration of renewables.

Emissions from the electricity sector dropped by 7.5 million tonnes compared to the previous year. Emissions from the oil and gas sector dropped by 3.4 million tonnes as result of reduced venting and flaring of gas.

Edge News – February 2021 Newsletter

We don’t know if time really does go faster as you get older, or if we hit the ground running so fast into 2021 that it felt like January was over before it started. Either way, whilst many enjoyed an extended break after a challenging 2020, our teams were pumping with productivity.
It’s the year of the Ox and we’re pretty excited about it! Diligence, resilience, and upward momentum symbolise the Chinese year of the Ox, and our team couldn’t be working more diligently, resiliently, or with any more upward momentum! We’re so excited to be proactively involved in the energy transition, and working with many brilliant minds to bring a range of renewable backed solutions to market – financial and physical.

Back to Basics Series – National Metering Identifiers (NMIs)

We’re embarking on a series of posts that go back to basics. As electricity market experts, too often we come across people and / or businesses who lack an understanding of what can and can’t be done in the market. Inevitably we find that it is difficult to educate if the basics aren’t fully understood. 

There is no doubt that energy markets are highly complex. For example, understanding every aspect of the National Electricity Market (NEM) is near impossible. But a solid understanding of the fundamentals is essential if you stand any chance of knowing some of the more complex aspects of it.

National Metering Identifiers

A National Metering Identifier (NMI) is a unique 10 or 11 digit number used to identify every electricity network connection point in Australia. This includes all types of metered and unmetered electricity connections to the physical electricity networks in the National Electricity Market (NEM), Western Australia markets (SWIS and NWIS) and the Northern Territory.

Learning about NMIs and their function is essential. NMIs allow all the relevant players in the market to identify your network connection point and the associated services, costs and service providers associated with it. NMIs and all the data and information associated with them, are recorded in the Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO’s) Market Settlement and Transfer Solutions system (MSATS), which all key service providers have access to. Put simply, MSATS is the IT system operated by AEMO to fulfil its obligations under the National Electricity Rules (NER). We’ll post on this soon.

Via MSATS, retailers become financially responsible for your NMI in the market, and therefore the costs associated with it. The energy and market costs to AEMO, the network use of system (NUOS) costs to your Network Service Provider (NSP), and the metering costs to your metering co-ordinator (MC). Your retailer is responsible for paying these costs to the relevant providers, and then recovers these costs through charges to you in your retail energy invoice.

Meter data is collected and recorded against a NMI. Any connection related works at your premises must be done with reference to a NMI (for example the installation of embedded generation). NMIs are transferred from service provider to service provider as the preferred party for these services changes, such as retailers and metering providers.

You can find your NMI on your electricity invoice. Noting a NMI will only change if there is a change to the physical connection infrastructure (for example, a change to the connection configuration or voltage) or the physical connection is removed and then later re-established.

In terms of industry speak, NMIs are often pronounced “Nim-ees” or “N M I’s”.

In the coming posts we will focus on the installation of generation at a NMI, including small scale solar PV and larger utility scale installations. How the configuration of generation can influence your consumption requirements from the market / grid and associated regulatory impacts.

Any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us on 1800 334 336 or email save@edgeutilities.com.au or admin@edge2020.com.au

Edge News – January 2021 Newsletter

Intertwined with Christmas and New Year celebrations, Edge2020 capped off the ‘year that was’ with excellent news regarding a 58MW renewable power purchase agreement (PPA) we brokered, and the re-signing of our longest serving and largest client.

With more renewable PPAs in the pipeline, we hope to share more good news in the coming weeks. This year we are more committed than ever to deliver consumers and generators ‘win-win’ energy solutions.

This is not all the great news we want to share. To read more about what we have been doing in the back end of 2020 and what we have in store for 2021, click the button below.

To say 2020 has been a colossal year………… is an understatement!

As the year rounds to an end, we would like to take the time to reflect and give thanks. Our sincere thanks to all those who have supported us during this difficult year. Our thoughts and best wishes go out to the individuals, families, and businesses who too have been adversely impacted by the events of 2020. We wish you well as you pivot and rebuild.

The year that was…

Big picture:

  • Trump does, well Trump things – drones, tweets, fails to manage COVID-19 better than anyone, apparently wins an election that he didn’t actually win.
  • China flexes its military muscles in our backyard, their international trade muscles get a workout too.
  • Oh, China also “seemingly” gifts the world COVID-19.
  • A global pandemic follows – 59.7 million cases worldwide, over 1.4 million deaths.
  • Entire industries and businesses are decimated as governments deliver unprecedented incentives.

Close to home:

  • Australian bushfires rage – 46 million acres burn, 1 billion animals perish, 6,000 buildings go, 34 people die.
  • Australia locks down to the threat of COVID-19 – 27.8k cases, over 900 deaths.
  • State and federal governments start spending, leading us into 2021 with a propped-up economy.
  • The RBA drops the cash rate to 0.10%.
  • Energy prices crash – only recently starting to rebound.
  • Many equity and commodity markets crash – most having firmly recovered.
  • Victorians are banished, for months.
  • The AFL grand final is played in QLD – and during the night! Go Tigers!!!
  • The State of Origin is played in three weeks, with the “worst QLD team ever” winning the series.
  • Northern NSW and QLD property prices soar, as they are deemed the safe space to be by cashed up southerners?!……… along with Chris Hemsworth and his mates.
  • Anna has “kept us safe” so she lives to torment Gladys another day.

 Closer to home:

  • Edge Energy Services turns 13 years young and is rebranded Edge2020.
  • Our team trades over $627 million in energy and environmental products.
  • Over 5.7 TWh  approximately $283 million in energy.
  • Over 800k Large-Scale Generation Certificates (LGCs), 1.2m Small-Scale Technology Certificates (STCs), and 33k Energy Savings Certificates (ESCs), totalling over $77 million in environmental certificates.
  • We facilitate over 775 GWh p.a. of renewable power purchase agreements (PPAs), with terms from 5 to 9 years and a total value of over $267 million.
  • We dive deep into the Safeguard Mechanism and deal in several Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs).
  • We continue to structure competitive renewable deals, and we blend and extend as we knowingly fall on our progressive portfolio management sword.
  • We say a temporary goodbye to a few large clients, as they bed down with fixed term fixed (COVID friendly) prices and + 30% savings.
  • We re-contract a number of larger clients, as they continue to support us as a valued business partner and energy management team.
  • Our team expands, then contracts, as we ride the wave of uncertainty.
  • Edge LIVE gets a welcomed facelift and a few new features, including deal capture.
  • Edge Utilities is reborn, officially launching on 1 July 2020. With a tenacious new National Sales Manager and some valued service providers, we deliver a shiny new website edgeutilities.com.au.
  • We dive into the world of strata / body corporate and all things embedded networks – determined to bring value to a “smaller” large consumer.
  • Our journey in this new world uncovers the good, the bad, and unfortunately, the ugly.
  • New products and business opportunities arise, pipelines grow, new trading partners present, new alliances are formed.

On a more personal note:

  • R U OK? Day coincides with me going public in support of kinder client relations with staff – too many lives lost, too many reasons why.
  • We focus on our people, as individuals that instinctively operate within our core values – with integrity, honesty, trust, loyalty, and respect.
  • With increased working from home arrangements, we become even more focused on cultivating a cohesive, supportive, and collaborate team culture.
  • We watch David Attenborough’s witness statement “A Life on Our Planet” and ask ourselves – How can we use our expertise to contribute to the “road to recovery?

2021 looks busy, but oh so sustainably bright!

  • We will shift our focus even more to renewable solutions, products, and markets.
  • Edge Utilities will move to become a fully renewable backed brokerage service.
  • We will soon be offering physical renewable solutions behind the meter and getting more involved in managing Frequency Control Ancillary Services (FCAS) and Virtual Power Plants (VPPs).
  • Edge2020 will continue to play a key role in assisting our clients to achieve their sustainability objectives and proactively manage energy market risks.

With renewable solutions exponentially gaining momentum, we’ve never been more excited about where our market and products are headed!

We hope you take a well-earned and restful Christmas break with loved ones.

Our team look forward to sharing much more detail with you soon and working with you in 2021.

Stay safe and well.

Stacey Vacher
Managing Director, Edge2020, Edge Utilities

AEMO Leads Global Push to Slash Emissions

As seen in recent reports published by Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), which include the Electricity Statement of Opportunities (ESOO) and the Integrated System Plan (ISP), the outstanding trend is the rapid growth of renewables and the need to connect the generation and load in a more robust manner.

As coal is retired the replacement technologies are now Solar and Wind.  This is resulting in issues such as, inertia and system strength. The network needs to be redesigned to cope with limitations, due to the lack of inertia provided by non-synchronous generation such as Solar and Wind.

AEMO, in conjunction with various Transmission Network Service Providers (TNSP) is leading the world in solving the issues associated with greater intermittent renewable generation on the network.

AEMO have launched the Global Power System Consortium (G-PST), a consortium of the six largest system operators grappling with high volumes of renewable generation and growth. The group includes:

  • Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO)
  • The National Grid Electricity System Operator UK
  • California Independent System Operator (CAISO)
  • The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT)
  • Ireland’s System Operator (EirGrid)
  • Denmark’s System Operator (Energinet)

The charter for the group is to achieve a 50 per cent cut in emissions by unlocking $10 trillion worth of investment in wind, solar and enabling technologies over the next 10 years.

Along with the lead members, 25 other system operators from around the world will participate in the G-PST. Several large research institutions will take part in the technical work, including:

  • Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
  • The Fraunhofer Cluster of Excellence for Integrated Energy Systems
  • National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
  • Latin American Energy Organization (OLADE)
  • Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
  • Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)
  • The Danish Technical University (DTU)
  • ASEAN Center for Energy (ACE)

During the announcement at London’s Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit, AEMO Chief Executive Officer, Ms Audrey Zibelman announced that, “Countries around the world are looking to pursue a path to modern low-emissions energy systems, but face significant challenges in acquiring and applying the technical knowledge needed to operate and plan rapidly transforming power systems”.

She went on to say that “The goal of G-PST is bold: to contribute to more than 50% emissions reductions of all pollutants around the world, over the next ten years, by acting as an enabler of new clean energy integration.”

GreenPower Rebranding

 

 

GreenPower, Australia’s accreditation program for renewable electricity is rebranding, to create renewed interest from businesses looking to cut their emissions. The GreenPower brand was launched in 1997 at the start of the renewable energy push towards electricity customers. At the time, most major electricity retailers offered some form of GreenPower as an extra to their electricity products.

The GreenPower program is voluntary for households and businesses to purchase renewable electricity through their retailer. It is a government backed program for verifying that purchases are from Australia’s wind and solar resources and aim to cut emissions. The GreenPower program sits on top of the mandated Renewable Energy Target so customers are voluntarily purchasing above what is legally required and therefore are supporting the increased growth of the Australian renewable energy sector.

To date 110,000 households and 17,500 businesses purchased renewable electricity through the GreenPower program, this comes from 500 accredited projects.

With the reduction in the cost of LGCs, the GreenPower program is encouraging households and businesses to consider participating in the voluntary program. As technologies improve, the cost of production of renewable energy has reduced since its inception in 1997, as a result renewable energy has become cheaper and this has flowed into the GreenPower product.

With the changing housing situation in Australia, many end users now rent and do not have access to roof top PV. The GreenPower program is a way for residential energy users without the ability to install rooftop solar to purchase renewable energy.

There are many benefits to going green with GreenPower. Your purchase supports Australian renewables, reduces your emissions, and contributes to a healthy future.

If you are wanting to protect the environment and support renewables, choosing GreenPower is a powerful way to show that your business is environmentally conscious and supports Australia’s renewable energy sector.

Our utilities retailers offer a range of green generation alternatives to help you meet your sustainability goals, including renewables, onsite solar generation, and energy efficient solutions.

Let Edge Utilities help you procure the best GreenPower deal for you.

Summer Reliability Looking Good

 

On Thursday 27 August 2020, AEMO published its latest Electricity Statement of Opportunities (ESOO), this is a projection of electricity supply reliability in the National Electricity Market (NEM) for the next 10 years.

The ESOO is key in identifying gaps in reliability which could lead to the calling of the Retailer Reliability Obligation (RRO) in the coming 5 years. As the ESOO covers the next 10 years, the second 5 years following the RRO looks closer at forecasts for the major transmission upgrades and the continued development of renewable generation.

This years ESOO has looked at the impact of COVID-19 and how this could impact the outlooks uncertainty. As a result of COVID-19 and the change in generation mix, demand changes and the gas market, it has resulted in AEMO not forecasting any unserved energy (USE) for the coming summer.

This years’ ESOO will require an update if the impact of COVID-19 is rapidly reversed due to a faster return to normal than expected. There are a few points of concern in AEMO’s statement including the delays or deferment of planned outages that could affect reliability over summer. ElectraNet have also reduced the summer rating on the Victoria to South Australia Interconnector in both directions following damage incurred during the bushfires of 2020.

A further downside of the reduced flow across the interconnectors is the further delays of the commissioning of renewable projects across the regions resulting in AEMO needing to deploy Reliability and Emergency Reserve Trader (RERT) to manage the expected unserved energy. The focus following this summer will be the outlook for reliability in New South Wales when Liddell Power Station retires.

The outlook has improved since the 2019 ESOO with the augmentation of the Queensland to New South Wales Interconnector (QNI) in 2022 to 2023 and increase renewable generation development in the region.

Another interesting observation is that by 2025, the minimum operational demand will occur during the middle of the day not the historic period overnight. As previously discussed, this will lead to the challenges of managing voltage, system strength and inertia.

AEMO is working with aggregators of Distributed Energy Resources (DER) to offer services such as increased PV controllability, load flexibility, storage, and load shifting.

Another urgent action for new projects is the requirement to ensure all new distributed PV installations have suitable disturbance ride-through capabilities and emergency PV shedding capabilities.

AEMO is also working with various stakeholder and industry experts to ensure energy supply is protected from the effects of increasing frequency, extremity and scale of climate induced weather events observed in recent years.

The NEM continues to see the connection of a large quantity of renewable generation with 4,300MW of new capacity forecast to be operational this summer, 1,900MW of this is expected in Victoria.

Due to impacts of COVID-19 and increased renewable generation penetration the reliability of thermal generators could remain at the historic lows observed during 2019-2020 or deteriorate further resulting in volatility.