Who are we

Generation Shared – a new company that designs urban shared energy systems
Merri Green – an inner-Melbourne multi-res development

Up to 70% of home solar energy is fed in to the grid. Batteries may reduce this to 40% but this requires a considerable investment. It is estimated only 55,000 Australian homes can use batteries economically. These homes are the large consumers.
It is desirable that energy is consumed where it is generated because less network is needed and there are no transmission losses. The local quality of electricity is improved.
Many homeowners have already invested in solar panels and are considering batteries. Possibly a third of solar owners.
Schemes to remunerate homeowners for feeding in the grid require regulatory changes and may take many years to be realised and established.
Feed in rates tied to the wholesale rate will remain very low until there is a price on carbon or some mechanism to raise the bottom of the market.
Australian has made COP21 commitments and needs to fulfil them.
Plenty of inner urban roofs should have solar panels and they do not.

Problems

Up to 70% of home solar energy is fed in to the grid. Batteries may reduce this to 40% but this requires a considerable investment. It is estimated only 55,000 Australian homes can use batteries economically. These homes are the large consumers.
It is desirable that energy is consumed where it is generated because less network is needed and there are no transmission losses. The local quality of electricity is improved.
Many homeowners have already invested in solar panels and are considering batteries. Possibly a third of solar owners.
Schemes to remunerate homeowners for feeding in the grid require regulatory changes and may take many years to be realised and established.
Feed in rates tied to the wholesale rate will remain very low until there is a price on carbon or some mechanism to raise the bottom of the market.
Australian has made COP21 commitments and needs to fulfil them.
Plenty of inner urban roofs should have solar panels and they do not.

Observations

Instead of excess solar being fed in to the grid, it should be used locally to reduce energy consumption (increase “grid independence”). This saves in excess of 20 cents per kilowatt instead of collecting 6 cents on a fed in kilowatt.
Little or no excess energy should be fed to the grid. This will reduce the imperative to update distributors for “bi-directional flows” anticipated to handle fed-in power. Parts of Queensland do not allow fed in power at all because of distribution problems.
Due to the averaging effect, a common economic principle, combining scarce resources provides more utility. In this case, combining batteries means they can be more effectively used, or alternatively, less battery capacity is needed for the same utility. As above, combining small energy consumers to “one large consumer” makes the use of batteries economic where they would not be separately.
No regulations or technologies bar the installation of private (“behind meter”) networks across titles or within strata for sharing electricity as a “supplementary supply” (under the Victorian PPA rules).

Our project is to take a design for cloud-based control of individual renewable energy generators (typically homes), privately wire them together, and use software to balance storage and consumption.
This is different from all present schemes for sharing energy because they either rely on the grid, rely on regulation change, rely on being off-grid or they do not anticipate a tightly coordinated form of control over storage devices.
Our test site allows across-strata sharing to be deployed and tested on separate inverters and batteries which will be installed across 49 dwellings.

Implementation

Implementation

Our project is to take a design for cloud-based control of individual renewable energy generators (typically homes), privately wire them together, and use software to balance storage and consumption.
This is different from all present schemes for sharing energy because they either rely on the grid, rely on regulation change, rely on being off-grid or they do not anticipate a tightly coordinated form of control over storage devices.
Our test site allows across-strata sharing to be deployed and tested on separate inverters and batteries which will be installed across 49 dwellings.

Clients

Merri green+

Merri green+represents the future of sustainable energy generation and consumption. It will be the first example in Australia of an inner city residential development micro-grid that generates, distributes and manages its own solar generated electricity.

What makes merri green+ unique in Australia is that the 49 dwellings will be the first to share an innovative new Tesla battery energy system thanks to a partnership with Tesla, CSR Bradford and Generation Shared. This bold new vision for energy management and storage has been featured widely in the media as a benchmark for future projects.

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The project will take two years and about seven FTE years.
The working energy sharing network will coincide with the construction of Merri Green, to start late 2016 and be done early 2018.
A new service to retrofit inner urban Australian homes starting in Victoria will launch in 2017.

Project timing

The project will take two years and about seven FTE years.
The working energy sharing network will coincide with the construction of Merri Green, to start late 2016 and be done early 2018.
A new service to retrofit inner urban Australian homes starting in Victoria will launch in 2017.

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Who are we

Problems

Problems

Observations

Implementation

Implementation

Clients

Merri green+

Project timing

Project timing

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