Australian technologies tapped for global solar diplomacy project

Two of Australia’s leading cleantech start-ups are lending their technology and expertise to an international effort to boost the global uptake of rooftop solar by installing super-smart PV systems on the roofs of world leaders.

The companies, Wattwatchers and Solar Analytics, are working with international not-for-profit Solar Head of State on five solar projects in the Caribbean region, the first of which, in St Lucia, is being completed and formally launched this week.

The St Lucia project has put a 10kW PV system on the roof of Government House on the small island state, that will use Solar Analytics’ system performance monitoring software in conjunction with Watwatchers’ metering device to maximise the benefits of the system.

As we have reported before on One Step Off The Grid, Solar Analytics is rapidly gaining recognition in Australia and globally for its intelligent residential solar performance monitoring software, which helps consumers understand their solar usage and improve their system’s performance.

In Australia, with its world-leading uptake of residential rooftop solar, there is a huge market for such technology, with most households in the dark about the performance of their PV.

“Solar monitoring isn’t a ‘nice to have’ product. It’s essential,” said Solar Analytics CEO Stefan Jarnason in August. “Thousands of dollars have been invested in a solar system and you rely on getting hundreds to thousands of dollars a year in benefits.

“Even for Australian solar owners who are regularly maintaining their solar panels, they need to be able to use a comprehensive solar dashboard to determine how their system is performing, what needs fixing or improving, where they are consuming their energy and to optimise their system to make their solar investment work harder for them. And it needs to be easy to understand,“ he told One Step Off The Grid.

Wattwatchers, meanwhile, specialises in an energy metering device that provides consumers with real-time data on their energy consumption and supply.

“I strongly believe that if we give consumers access to real time data they will reduce their energy consumption significantly – either to be green or to save money,” Wattwatchers’ new managing director Gavin Dietz told RenewEconomy in an interview in July.

The combination of the two companies’ technologies in the St Lucia project means the solar output and overall energy consumption of its Government House can be tracked in real-time from anywhere over the internet, via  computers and smart mobile devices.

The two Sydney-based companies met the Solar Head of State team at an international clean energy showcase in San Francisco in June, where they were exhibiting their technologies alongside 98 other handpicked companies from 17 countries.

Based in the US state of California, Solar Head of State – which uses a consortium of project donors including Trina Solar, Enphase Energy, and the Californian Clean Energy Fund (CalCEF) – has already facilitated the installation of solar at the White House and the Maldives Presidential Palace.

The NGO’s Director of Project Development, James Ellsmoor, says the St Lucia project is the product of a unique international collaboration brought together over the past 12 months.

“It’s been made possible by the collective contributions of technology companies, corporate sponsors, government, research institutions, leading climate action advocates and engaged individuals – our amazing community of support from around the world.

“If we’d been doing this a couple of years ago we could have shared photos or shown video footage of the solar system being installed on Government House in St Lucia, but now the digital age allows us to show how it’s actually working every day, from day one.”

In 2017 and beyond, Solar Head of State is planning to move on to the Pacific Islands and the Asian region for more installations.