Brookfield-backed metering firm buys assets of “smart pool” retailer sunk by energy crisis

One of the casualties of Australia’s energy market crisis, a retailer focusing on the smart management of backyard swimming pools, has been bought up by leading Australian metering company, Intellihub.

Intellihub, a 50/50 joint venture between Pacific Equity Partners (PEP) and global asset manager Brookfield, said on Monday that it had acquired the assets of Pooled Energy – Australia’s first digital pool management and monitoring business.

Pooled Energy, which has been rebranded as “Pooled,” was forced into administration in May after a 10-fold rise in wholesale electricity prices that plunged a number of smaller retailers into financial trouble.

The New South Wales-based company’s electricity customers were transferred to other retailers and its retail licence was suspended.

Intellihub says the business will be carried on without the retail energy component, focusing instead on its technology that promises cleaner, healthier pools while reducing energy consumption and maintenance costs.

“The team at Pooled saw the opportunity to help pool owners save time and cut costs – and better manage their pool. They had the technology to do this,” says Intellihub CEO Wes Ballantine.

“We see that potential too. Intellihub can provide the resources and know-how to help make their technology even smarter and more reliable for their customers.

Pooled Energy got its big break in 2015, when it was awarded a $2.5 million grant by Arena in 2018 for a $5 million project that combined energy retailing with automation for pool pumps, designed to operate when wind and solar pushed the prices low.

At that time, the company was in the early stages of rolling out its “integrated solution” of pool automation and energy management services it claimed could cut swimming pool energy consumption from almost half of total household usage (40 per cent), to 10 per cent.

The company had also established itself is an electricity retailer in the National Electricity Market, to develop a virtual private national grid that sold only to swimming pool owners and operators.

According to a 2018 article in the AFR, the company was founded by WorleyParsons founder John Grill, Keating adviser and venture capitalist John Riedl and retired Honeywell veteran Greg Irving, who had developed power automation and alternative pool chemistry.

The AFR said a total of $15 million had been raised for the company, including the ARENA grant.

While the focus of the company might seem niche, its push into pool automation was part of a broad focus on controlled loads and demand response that will allow the demand side of the national electricity market to be flexible, given that with increased wind and solar, the supply will be variable.

For the Brookfield-backed Intellihub – which in April of this year acquired Melbourne-based energy management tech specialist GreenSync – Pooled’s technology is a great match for its growing smart meter and behind the meter data management business.

Already, Intellihub manages more than 1.6 million smart meters across Australia and New Zealand on behalf of electricity retailers.

And using GreenSync’s cloud-based distributed energy resource management software, deX – or decentralised energy exchange – it can get near real-time visibility and of the DER data required for Virtual Power Plant (VPP) participation.

“It would take all the energy from our largest electricity generator to power the 1.3 million pools in Australia – that’s around 3GW of electricity,” Ballantine says.

“That consumer load is a resource that can help make the electricity system more secure and more reliable. But you need a way to register, control and manage these devices.

“We think we can help with that.”

Intellihub says, having bought up Pooled’s remaining assets, it has been working closely with the company’s team to restore its pool management and monitoring services to pre-existing customers.

Customers manage their pool via simple directions from an app, while a unique blend of advanced water chemicals are sent directly to the home for the pool owner to add to the pool once or twice a year.

Going forward, the plan is to explore new opportunities to work with pool owners, electricity retailers and its partners to better manage the high electrical load from pools in much the same way as solar, batteries, water heating and electric vehicle charging.

“We’re targeting an extra 20,000 new customers over the next two to three years and expansion outside NSW, particularly in states like Queensland and Victoria,” Ballantine says.

“There are more than 1.3 million pool owners in Australia, and we believe Pooled can help better manage their pools.”