Australian Energy Market Operator and Energy Web partner on blockchain-based VPP pilot

Project Symphony is a two-year initiative to pilot consumer owned distributed energy resources as a virtual power plant (VPP).

The project taking place in Southern River, Perth in Western Australia, is an initiative of Energy Web in partnership with the utilities Western Power as the project lead and Synergy, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), and the Western Australian government.

Project Symphony aims to orchestrate approximately 900 distributed resources across 500 homes and businesses into a VPP to generate and store electricity at a local level. The project will allow for the aggregation of all generated energy, optimised storage, distribution, and sale of that energy in manner similar to a traditional power plant.

Initially running in an off-market environment, VPPs will eventually enable DER owners to sell excess energy back to the grid via an aggregator.

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“By informing the blueprint for a solution designed for the modern energy market, where distributed energy resources can be actively integrated and appropriately leveraged, Project Symphony will bring us closer to a future where their full capabilities can be harnessed to deliver sustainable value to all customers and to the stability of the power system,” says Bruce Redmond, DER Product Owner at AEMO.

In Western Australia, more than 1 in 3 households have rooftop solar installed, with the proportion expected to increase to 1 in 2 by 2030. While this uptake accelerates the decarbonisation of the energy grid, it also presents risks to power system security and reliability with issues such as low minimum demand and variable generation.

The Au$35 million (US$26 million) Project Symphony is a flagship project under the Western Australian government’s Distributed Energy Resources Roadmap, a programme for enabling the transition to a highly distributed energy future.

Energy Web will deliver the data exchange component required for aggregators to access the market. Energy Web’s blockchain-backed operating system can assign digital identities to participants, facilitating the secure and efficient exchange and validation of market participant data.

Western Power is acting as the DSO, AEMO as the distribution market operator and Synergy as the distributed resource aggregator.