Alice Springs Future Grid is tri­al­ing the North­ern Territory’s first res­i­den­tial Vir­tu­al Pow­er Plant (VPP). The tri­al will look at how a VPP can help keep the grid sta­ble while increas­ing the amount of clean ener­gy in the Alice Springs pow­er system.

Sign ups for the Future Grid Solar Con­nect VPP tri­al are now open.

What is a Vir­tu­al Pow­er Plant?

A Vir­tu­al Pow­er Plant (VPP) is typ­i­cal­ly a col­lec­tion of solar and bat­tery stor­age sys­tems that are treat­ed like a sin­gle source of energy. 

VPPs use smart tech­nol­o­gy to con­trol the ener­gy flow to and from the grid on demand – ben­e­fit­ting the house­hold, grid and the community.

Why Vir­tu­al Pow­er Plants?

Solar pow­er has become very pop­u­lar in our town. How­ev­er, on bright sun­ny days, when solar pan­els are gen­er­at­ing lots of ener­gy, it can cre­ate chal­lenges in bal­anc­ing sup­ply and demand in our grid.

Alice Springs Future Grid is explor­ing ways to store and dis­trib­ute the pow­er of the sun, includ­ing through our VPP trial.

Use this link to down­load an Alice Springs Future Grid VPP info sheet. 

The Solar Con­nect trial

Solar Con­nect is a town-wide VPP solar and bat­tery tri­al link­ing house­holds via a Vir­tu­al Pow­er Plant. House­holds in the VPP will share solar and bat­tery pow­er in ways that ben­e­fit the Alice Springs grid and form the next gen­er­a­tion of more sus­tain­able ener­gy solutions.

Solar Con­nect is invit­ing house­holds who have either rooftop solar, or solar with a bat­tery sys­tem to sign up.

Pre-sub­­mis­­sion checklist

To be eli­gi­ble you will need to:

• Be a Jacana Ener­gy customer
• Be an own­er-occu­pi­er of the home you wish to reg­is­ter in the trial
• Have a con­tin­u­ous inter­net connection
• Own an eli­gi­ble* solar and/​or bat­tery stor­age sys­tem (or install one with­in a nom­i­nat­ed timeframe)
  

*LG Chem, BYD, Red­back and oth­er brands can be enrolled in the tri­al. How­ev­er, it is impor­tant to check that your invert­er brand is com­pat­i­ble, this may be a dif­fer­ent brand to your battery.

Please note:
1. Com­plet­ing our sign up form will allow us to assess your sys­tem’s eli­gi­bil­i­ty but does not guar­an­tee your par­tic­i­pa­tion. Vouch­ers will be pro­vid­ed to tri­al par­tic­i­pants once deemed eli­gi­ble and upon the suc­cess­ful enrol­ment into the Alice Springs Future Grid VPP tri­al.
2. Places in the tri­al are limited.