Progress has been made on a major Virtual Power Plant (VPP).   

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) Project Symphony is now live, with over 300 customers and 650 customer-owned distributed energy resources (DER) recruited to participate in Western Australia’s largest Virtual Power Plant (VPP).   

The authority has marked the completion of the build and integration of the technology platforms, saying the VPP is entering a ‘stability period’, enabling the project to commence scenario testing to determine the services and potential value that the VPP can offer its customers, the power system and the wider community.

“This is the first time ever in the Perth metropolitan area that customer-owned energy resources including rooftop solar and batteries have been ‘orchestrated’ to test their ability in addressing system stability challenges, as we transition to a lower cost renewable energy future,” says AEMO’s Executive General Manager for WA and Strategy, Kate Ryan. 

“The scenario testing will be undertaken by the three partner organisations, AEMO as the market and system operator, Western Power as the distribution network service operator and Synergy as the aggregator. Central to the success of this pilot are the customers who have signed up their assets to be ‘orchestrated’ to participate in the pilot.”

Project Symphony will test four different scenarios to uncover insights to inform future policy decisions.

Testing is now underway for two of the scenarios in a simulated Wholesale Electricity Market (WEM) where over 200 customer energy assets have been successfully ‘orchestrated’ as a single facility. 

These include Wholesale Energy Services where the VPP bids and dispatches in real time whilst Network Support Services helps manage local voltage to improve network reliability.

The number of assets will continue to scale with a ‘Constrain to Zero’ scenario scheduled for testing in December and Contingency Raise frequency service following early in the new year.

Rigorous testing of all the scenarios will continue until April 2023 with key outcomes to be published by the end of 2023. 

The $35.5 million pilot is a key deliverable of the Distributed Energy Resources Roadmap, and is funded by the Western Australian Government, AEMO and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.