Pioneering community wind farm adds battery and home-grown smarts to dodge negative prices

The first community wind farm to be built on Australia’s main grid nearly 15 years ago will use smart bidding software originated at the University of Adelaide to help it survive and thrive in an increasingly volatile electricity market.

South Australian outfit, OptiGrid, said on Wednesday it has inked a deal with Hepburn Energy, in Victoria, to use the OptiBidder platform to manage the operation of a 5 MWh battery that is being added to the existing 4.1 MW, two turbine Hepburn Energy Park.

OptiBidder uses AI and machine learning to manage energy market bidding for battery-connected solar and wind farms, maximising revenue while adapting to market rules and technical constraints.

In the case of the Hepburn Energy Park, it will work with the soon-to-be deployed battery to manage increasing exposure to negative wholesale electricity prices, which are eating into the wind farm’s revenue and compromising its goal of transitioning the Hepburn Shire to zero-net emissions by 2030.

“When Hepburn Energy is exposed to negative wholesale prices, it has to suspend operations” says OptiGrid CEO Sahand Karimi.

“To address this, Hepburn has selected OptiGrid’s OptiBidder platform to manage the operation of a new 5MWh battery being deployed at its wind farm.”

Hepburn Energy general manager Taryn Lane says negative power prices – which happens when too much renewable energy floods the grid, often during the middle of the day – have become a bigger and bigger problem for the small project, which has to manage its PPA obligations as well as trade on the wholesale electricity spot market.

“When there’s not a coal fired power station down… when the large generators are operating normally, you know we are basically being impacted daily.

“It can be hours, you know, up to …six or seven hours in a day [that the turbines are switched off], particularly in the summer months… and it’s just been increasing year on year,” Lane tells Renew Economy.

“Going back three years ago, it was sort of 1-2% of generation. The next year it was 3-5% and, I think, last year it was sitting at about 12 per cent of generation.

“It’s definitely a major, major issue, particularly for… really small projects like ours that are exposed to these kind of risks,” Lane says

“So having the battery will partially mitigate that, and having good technology partners to help us, you know, respond to the market really fast, which is what OptiGrid can do… is just really the next step for us, and where we need to go to secure our income going forward.”

The Leonards Hill wind farm’s two turbines, dubbed “Gale” and “Gusto,” were installed in central Victoria in 2011 by a then 1,900 member cooperative led by founding chair Simon Holmes à Court. (The co-op now numbers closer to 2,000 shareholding members.)

In 2022, electricity retailer Flow Power secured a wind offtake from Hepburn Energy to create a special residential retail offer: Power Renewable Home – Hepburn, which allows the Hepburn community to have their electricity use matched with wind from the two turbines.

Plans to add energy storage to the award winning project were given a funding boost in 2023, when Hepburn Energy was granted up to $500,000 from the federal government’s $200 million Community Batteries for Household Solar program.

Lane says deployment of the new battery managed by OptiBidder will make the Hepburn Energy project the first hybrid wind and battery facility on the distribution network in Australia, and the first community project overall.

“In total, this is a $1.7 million project,” she tells Renew Economy. “So we’ve secured financing for the balance and the project, we’ve completed all the civil works on site, the battery has arrived from China, and it’s going to be craned in on site on Friday, which is so exciting.

“And we’re looking to commission by the end of August.”

For OptiGrid, which officially launched into the market in 2024, the Hepburn Energy contract will bring total energy assets under management by its platform to 40MW in the last three months.

The South Australia-based company is backed by investors led by IP Group and including Clean Energy Finance Corporation, Hostplus, University of Adelaide, University of New South Wales (UNSW) and EnergyLab.

Karimi says that the NEM’s transition to five-minute markets and the increasing share of intermittent renewables has increased energy price volatility, making it increasingly hard for battery operators to get the most out of their assets.

“Using AI and machine learning to intelligently manage energy market bidding will make it easier for new batteries to get funding, accelerating the transition to 100% renewable energy,” he said this week.

“We’re excited to support Hepburn Energy in making this battery deployment a standout success and a benchmark for the many sub-5MW solar and wind farms striving for similar goals.”

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