Horizon Power chooses SwitchDin to supply secure utility gateways for residential solar & battery systems in Onslow WA
West Australian utility Horizon Power has selected SwitchDin to provide enhanced Droplet controllers as ‘Secure Gateway Devices’ (SGDs) to enable strategic deployment of high levels of distributed energy resources in the Onslow region.
Under the three-year contract, homes and businesses in the north-west town of Onslow installing new solar and battery storage systems will be provided with an SGD.
“The SGD rollout will help to boost uptake of solar PV, battery storage and controllable loads on the network by allowing Horizon Power to ensure these customer-owned devices can be smoothly and securely integrated into the local grid’s operation,” said SwitchDin CEO Dr Andrew Mears.
“SwitchDin’s SGD will provide feed-in management, demand management and battery management capability for individual sites. It will provide Horizon Power with the ability to orchestrate these resources to maximise system-wide efficiency.”
“The SGDs are highly secure, physically durable and versatile energy management systems. With an independent communications channel for utilities it provides an all-round robust arrangement for utility-grade deployments.”
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The issue of limited solar hosting capacity is a well recognised challenge for electricity networks (see: Open Energy Networks), and one of the main barriers to uptake of distributed solar PV.
The announcement coincides with the WA Distributed Energy Resources Roadmap - Industry Workshop, being held in Perth on 30 July. The Roadmap is being developed to ensure that Western Australia can integrate growing levels of DER into the State’s electricity systems in a safe and secure way and to make sure customers can continue to benefit from solar PV and other new technologies.
As with all SwitchDin Droplets, the SGD can be managed via SwitchDin’s Stormcloud cloud management platform to build and manage virtual power plants for energy market participation and network services.