Overview
High penetration of distributed PV and battery storage systems is currently an area of focus for governments, regulators, networks, technology providers and consumer groups, with many trials being undertaken throughout Australia. These trials focus very much on the technical impacts, with relatively little attention being paid to the financial impacts on the different stakeholders involved. Currently, when a customer exports PV electricity to its neighbours on the distribution network, the full distribution use of system (DUOS) charges are paid. Altered tariffs with reduced DUOS would increase the financial viability of PV but have unknown impacts on the networks and hence on other customers. Exported PV electricity may also be able to be on-sold at a lower tariff than retail electricity, reducing costs for customers that don’t have PV, thus also helping retailers with customer acquisition. The coordinated use of PV and batteries can also help to develop sections of the network with greater independence and hence reliability, but the relative sizes of PV, batteries and loads need to be optimised.
Funder
This work has been supported by the UNSW CRC for Low Carbon Living and Energy Consumers Australia.
Download the User Interface and Models!
The Community Microgrid model is currently implemented as a beta version with a User Interface. It can be obtained from this link. Make sure you select the most recent version (it will be at the top of the page). Once you’ve selected the correct link (depending on whether you have Mac or PC), just download the EnergySharing.zip file. Instructions for download and use of the model can be found here. (Note that the Solar Apartment Model is not functional in this version, but can be found here.)
We are always wanting to improve the model, so if you have any feedback please email any comments and bugs here.