Australia’s largest electricity network operator, Ausgrid, is testing an idea that could challenge the rules for how energy networks operate — and in doing so, it argues, speed up the clean energy transition.
Its new Community Power Network (CPN) pilot goes beyond the traditional ‘poles and wires’ role of networks, and is designed to show how they might directly help deliver cheaper bills, fairer access to solar, and faster decarbonisation.
If successful, the trial could mark a turning point: proving that regulated networks, long confined to their own “swim lanes,” can also be allowed to be engines of innovation and equity in the energy system.
The pilot, now out for public consultation, seeks to unlock the untapped potential of commercial rooftop solar and redistribute its benefits to entire communities — including renters, apartment dwellers, and households unable to afford panels.
Ausgrid CEO Marc England told the SwitchedOn Australia podcast the trial is designed to reduce costs, increase equity, and cut emissions, and he believes it could point the way to a new paradigm for Australia’s energy future.
“We have studies and data that suggests that if we could cover those warehouse roofs with solar, we could reduce the cost of electricity for those living close to those solar installs,” says England. “We could share it more equitably across the community, and we can encourage decarbonising.”
The CPN pilot will be run in two locations: Mascot-Botany in Sydney and Charmhaven on the Central Coast. The areas were chosen to test different community profiles — Charmhaven being more residential, while Mascot-Botany mixes social housing, renters, and large-scale warehouses.
In Mascot alone, Ausgrid has identified 112 megawatts (MW) of untapped rooftop solar potential — enough to power 23,000 homes. With 68% of Mascot residents living in apartments and 50% renting, the suburb is an ideal testbed for more equitable access to solar.
The pilot is expected to deliver $22.9 million in energy cost savings over five years, or around $150–$200 per household per year for the 32,000 customers in both pilot areas.
Ausgrid will run a reverse auction for solar installers to compete for contracts, encouraging private investment. The lowest-cost bids will be accepted.
“We’ll then be installing batteries in both those suburbs of varying sizes, sometimes on premise at a warehouse, sometimes in the network, in order to ensure that all the surplus solar that comes off those rooftops gets fed into the network … and is then redistributed to customers when it’s most needed in the evenings,” England says.
Ausgrid, however, cannot pursue such a project without regulatory approval.
Under ring-fencing rules, distribution network service providers (DNSPs) are prohibited from participating in competitive markets such as solar generation, storage, or EV charging.
Only under the AER’s regulatory sandbox mechanism can allow pilots like CPN to move forward. But they often run into fierce opposition, from others in the industry who fear the networks’ monopoly power should rule them out of such initiatives.
England, however, argues that the current “swim lanes” for networks are outdated and limit innovation at a time when the energy system needs new solutions.
“If we’re allowed to play in the sandbox, it allows us to break the current boundaries of what we’re allowed to do in order to test those hypothesis,” says England.
“We stay, for the most part, within what people call our swim lanes. But at the same time, there’s a lot of paradigms in this energy transition that I’d call old paradigms being applied to new problems, and we need some new paradigms.”
Local power, lower costs, less transmission
Ausgrid’s ambitions go beyond getting more solar into the system. Marc England wants networks to play a bigger role in community-scale batteries and kerbside electric vehicle charging — areas currently restricted by regulation.
Others are dead against it, but England argues that DNSPs are uniquely placed to deliver this kind of infrastructure cheaply, using the poles, wires and substations they already manage.
“We could provide 11,000 EV chargers over the next five years at a very low cost, because we can do it at scale. We can use existing infrastructure where possible,” he says.
Under his proposal, networks would build the charging infrastructure, while customers could still choose their retailer for charging payments, keeping competition intact.
England is also sceptical of the federal government’s new Cheaper Home Batteries scheme, which has triggered a surge in installations since July 1.
He believes the focus on household batteries risks leaving behind renters and apartment dwellers — around a third of Australians — and argues that community-scale storage can deliver greater benefits at lower cost.
“The cost of a five megawatt community battery that provides storage as a service to customers and saves them $200 off their bill is about half the cost to society of a home battery, half the cost per kilowatt hour,” he says. “Yet it delivers the same outcome.”
At the heart of England’s vision is the idea of keeping energy local. Ausgrid studies suggest its existing network rooftops could, if fully tapped, generate enough electricity to cover its entire annual demand.
Localising supply in this way, England argues, would reduce the need for expensive new high-voltage transmission lines and massive regional wind or solar projects.
“That’s the sort of future we’re testing here,” he says. “It would de-risk the amount of large-scale wind farms that need to be built in this energy transition, and de-risk the energy transition as a whole, while also reducing the cost for consumers.”
Ausgrid expects the CPN pilot to cut peak demand in trial zones by as much as 30%, making the network more efficient and reducing long-term costs for all customers.
Critics say that letting DNSPs stray beyond their “poles and wires” role risks expanding their monopoly power.
Stephanie Bashir, CEO of Nexa Advisory, argues that publicly funded community batteries run by networks could entrench DNSP dominance rather than deliver genuine community benefit.
“There is a serious risk, that by granting networks a class waiver … community batteries won’t meet the policy intent of the federal government’s program and will not deliver full benefits to Australian customers or their communities,” Bashir wrote in Renew Economy.
England counters that Ausgrid may be a monopoly, but it is a regulated one, designed to serve the public interest.
“We need to make sure distributors are not seen as this thing you’ve got to box in, constrain or handcuff, whatever metaphor you use, so they can’t play a role to reduce the cost of energy,” he says.
“As a regulated monopoly where we exist for the benefit of everyone, we think there’s other answers too that need to be considered more deeply.”
“I’m astounded at the opportunities that are just being missed.”
You can hear the full interview with Mark England on the SwitchedOn Australia podcast.
