Australian researchers test new tech to help smash the solar ceiling, bring PV to apartments

A University of New South Wales pilot will test the ability of an artificial intelligence-powered energy system to help expand access to rooftop solar and battery storage for those living in apartments.

The new pilot combines an AI-powered energy system developed by researchers at UNSW Canberra with a Modular Power Portal System (MPPS) developed by industry partners Voltval and JT Solar which integrates rooftop solar power generation with shared battery storage for apartment buildings.

Backed by a $1.2 million grant from the Australian Department of Education’s Trailblazer Recycling & Clean Energy (TRaCE) program, the pilot will combine the two systems in order to better predict and improve energy usage across multiple properties – such as in apartment buildings and multi-unit dwellings – to make the platform smarter, more efficient, and ready for real-world use.

“Through this partnership, we will develop and validate advanced AI-enabled optimisation technologies that can intelligently coordinate shared solar and battery resources across multiple residents,” said Dr Ripon Chakrabortty, from the School of Systems & Computing at UNSW Canberra.

Australia currently leads the world in terms of rooftop solar uptake per capita, with approximately one in three Australian households playing host to rooftop solar panels and boasts some of the highest levels of distributed PV penetration across the globe.

The benefits of solar have largely been inaccessible to the more than 2.5 million Australians who currently live in apartments, however. For example, according to UNSW Canberra, only 3.5 per cent of apartment dwellers in New South Wales have access to rooftop solar, a significant discrepancy, especially considering that one in five homes in the state is an apartment.

Of course, there are significant challenges to solar adoption for apartment dwellers – including complex shared ownership arrangements, out of date metering infrastructure, as well as the fundamental problem that most apartment complexes were never designed for distributed energy.

These same challenges are also inherent in many townhouse, mixed-use development, and commercial and industrial buildings, serving to expand the gap in access to more affordable and clean energy in urban communities.

By combining UNSW Canberra’s AI-powered energy system with the MPPS developed by Voltval and JT Solar, the researchers aim to create new ways to deploy clean energy in high-density urban environments such as apartment complexes.

Specifically, the researchers hope the combined technologies will be capable of forecasting energy generation and demand, coordinating distributed energy resources, and balance electricity flows between apartments in real time.

The technology pilot will be spread across a multi-site combining commercial and residential sites across Sydney, with the real-world performance data being used to validate the system for the initial site types.

“The UNSW partnership has given us the research depth to properly validate what we have built and the confidence to take it to market,” said Jason (Jiangang) Xiao, director of JT Solar Technology.

“The same barriers holding back clean energy adoption in Sydney’s apartments and strata developments exist in dense urban environments worldwide. We believe the MPPS can help rapidly decarbonise buildings at scale and contribute to a more resilient and inclusive energy future.”

Associate professor Huadong Mo at UNSW Canberra, who co-leads the project with Dr Chakrabortty, believes their work could increase the use of renewable energy and lower operating costs for participating buildings by as much as 30 per cent.

“The next phase of Australia’s clean energy transition will depend on ensuring that apartment residents can participate in the benefits of distributed energy resources,” he said.

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