As Australia’s energy system rapidly moves from centralised fossil fuel power to renewables, people are seeking more options for how they consume, generate, manage, store and share electricity.
Mondo is playing a key part in providing the solutions to empower businesses and communities to radically alter their role in Australia’s burgeoning new energy market.
“Our focus is helping our customers, businesses and communities take control of their energy needs, manage it and monetise it,’’ says Jodie Hallam, General Manager of Energy Services at Mondo. ‘‘Our experience managing traditional energy networks means we are ideally placed to apply that expertise to understanding the future of energy.”
Using hardware and software developed in house and manufactured locally, Mondo is already demonstrating what the future of the energy landscape may look like. It has installed solar, battery and the Mondo energy management platform in businesses, universities and homes across Australia.
Mondo is now looking to enable energy consumers to be part of a trusted, environmentally friendly community virtual power station through a ground-breaking new energy marketplace trial in regional Victoria called project EDGE (Energy Demand and Generation Exchange), in conjunction with the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) and AusNet and with financial support from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA). Hallam calls it the ‘‘Uber model for energy”.
The trial is taking place in north-east Victoria, with Mondo taking a leading role as an energy aggregator, incentivising customers to share their spare energy capacity via the Mondo Energy Management Platform. It means communities can share in the social, environmental and economic benefits of this new energy future. EDGE builds on other projects from Mondo, such as the Deakin Microgrid in Geelong and the partnering with Totally Renewable Yackandandah in their efforts to power the town with 100 per cent renewable energy.
Through access to large volumes of data, the Mondo platform also provides transparency and enables customers to understand their energy use, its cost and the impact their energy use has on the environment. That is leading to more investment in self-generation and storage technology, all of which needs to be integrated with the rest of Australia’s energy system via such smart platforms.
The Mondo platform orchestrates fleets of local and behind-the-meter generation with the grid and enables value to flow back to communities and customers via reduced energy and network costs, or even through the monetisation of “spare” energy capacity sent back into the grid.
Being able to integrate energy locally and from behind the meter into the grid requires a clever digital platform that makes it easy for customers to understand the amount of spare energy capacity they have at their sites and easy for them to sell it back into the grid. The two-sided EDGE marketplace is an example of this, where we act as a facilitator between the supply and demand customers.
The massive industry shift over the last decade from centralised to decentralised power generation has upended the country’s energy market; not only are customers demanding new ways to manage their energy, but new technology requires digital expertise to get the best value from it. To date, 21 per cent of Australian households have installed rooftop solar panels which generate more than 10 gigawatts (GW) of power.
‘‘The future is around activating distributed energy resources (DER) such as rooftop solar and storage and, in doing so, creating value for society as a whole. To enable value capture, we need as an industry to move to a platform-based scenario, where clever digital platforms can integrate the small and large scale energy generators with buyers,’’ Hallam says.
Our Mondo Platform is at the forefront of aggregation and orchestration of DERs to create significant value to our consumers, network operators, the market operator and other market participants.
Mondo’s platform can optimise DER to reduce energy costs as well as help customers achieve their pursuit of a more sustainable future.
Without being able to take DER and integrate it, you can’t recognise the true value of local energy generation or generation sitting behind the meter and the value this can bring to the management of the overall energy system.
‘‘Energy consumers say they want to be more energy self-reliant. They want to reduce emissions; they want to make sure they have control over energy costs and the resiliency in their energy systems. And they want to demonstrate a commitment to a greener future.’’
Mondo’s approach is to partner over the long term with businesses, communities and current industry participants to create overall value as Australia navigates through the energy transition towards an increasingly decarbonised future.
• Project EDGE received funding from ARENA as part of ARENA’s Advancing Renewables Program
• The views expressed herein are not necessarily the views of the Australian government, and the Australian government does not accept responsibility for any information or advice contained herein
Source: Australian Financial Review