Australia gets new player in auto-bidding renewables and storage market

The rise and rise of energy market optimisation technologies and auto-bidding platforms on Australia’s increasingly renewable energy powered National Electricity Market continues this week with the launch on the local market of UK-founded company GridBeyond.

GridBeyond, which describes itself as the world’s leading technology player for managing distributed and flexible energy resources, said on Thursday that it has expanded its geographic reach to provide services to Australia.

Like Fluence, Overwatch Energy and others, GridBeyond uses artificial intelligence and data to provide demand response, virtual power plant (VPP) services and generation and storage asset optimisation for solar farms, wind farms, big batteries and industrial loads.

GridBeyond describes its role as creating increased cost savings and additional revenues through optimisation tools and robotic trading and by optimising the combination of different assets, or by running consumption profiles through AI and participating in grid services.

Having launched in 2010, the company has expanded into the markets of Ireland, the US and Japan, providing services to more than 400 sites worldwide.

Australia, with its lurch away from baseload coal and towards variable renewables and storage, and all of the growing pains that come with that, was an obvious next step.

“Australia is a market with very strong fundamentals for the long-term success of demand flexibility services where electricity consumers value highly any services that protect them against market prices’ high volatility,” said GridBeyond senior business development manager Diogo Cabral in a statement.

“At the moment with the increasing number of extreme weather events per year, there is a strong political shift away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy, which strengthens the business case for demand flexibility in Australia.

“With the help of GridBeyond, C&I businesses can become a strong support in providing valuable grid services through demand response, to allow the continuous and sustainable growth of renewable energy and support the country towards its net zero targets,” Cabral said.

GridBeyond CEO Michael Phelan said the FCAS (frequency control ancillary services) market in Australia was very similar to that of Ireland.

“So we are bringing unparalleled expertise to Australian businesses to manage their flexible energy resources and co-optimise them with wholesale trading. Our microgrid controls that integrate EVs are also a good fit for Australia’s energy market need,” Phelan said.

Already in the Australian market, US-based Fluence has been going from strength to strength with its automated electricity trading technology, which has been deployed at wind farms, big batteries and solar farms.

Most recently, Fluence’s IQ Bidding Application was tapped for use at three new solar farms in New South Wales, owned by Greek industrial and energy company Mytilineos.

And in March, Fluence’s automated trading platform was put to use at the Longwarry BESS – a 5MW/7.5MWh battery energy storage system contracted to support the Ausnet grid in Victoria.