Smart energy software enabler Evergen will provide the platform to operate a two-year home energy management system (HEMS) pilot at Carseldine Village, a new Queensland Government development in Brisbane delivering net-zero energy emission terrace homes. Carseldine Village is being delivered by Economic Development Queensland (EDQ).
Carseldine Village includes 194 sustainable living freehold terrace homes featuring solar PV and AlphaESS battery storage systems. Evergen software optimises the energy use for those homes participating in the HEMS pilot. Twenty-five homeowners will be part of the pilot scheme, with homes responding to signals from the electricity grid. The objective is to learn how home energy use can be modified throughout the day to provide the best value to the homeowner and to avoid congestion on the grid.
Evergen was chosen as the preferred HEMS provider by the Carseldine Village builders, Vantage and Thompson Sustainable Homes, based on Evergen’s ease of install and customer interface, and are importantly one of Energy Queensland’s panel of HEMS providers.
Evergen CEO Ben Hutt, said, “We are excited to partner with the Carseldine Village terrace home builders, and to work with Economic Development Queensland and Energy Queensland because smarter use of energy will be essential as Australians are compensated less and less for any excess power generated from their solar. We believe that over time, anyone who invests in a solar and battery system should benefit from free energy for life and ultimately be able to participate in the energy market as prosumers.”
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Through Evergen’s intelligent control software, the HEMS pilot will coordinate the home’s rooftop solar, battery and air conditioning units based on the homeowner preferences and the needs of the network.
Under the HEMS, when a system generates solar, the first place that power goes is to the house. If the house has a lower load than is being generated, then it will fill the battery. If the battery is full, then it will export to the grid. Ideally, network operators want to optimise when that waterfall effect happens because all of the houses do it simultaneously.
“The aim is to evolve the home energy system to make smarter use of the energy, which is the next step in the long-term development of a domestic solar and storage capability that complements the grid,” Mr Hutt said. “This will become more and more important as homeowners are compensated in ever-smaller amounts (or even penalised) for putting their excess energy into the grid.”
The system will learn the homeowner’s usage patterns and make decisions that work with that lifestyle, such as when the owner most usually returns home or runs peak load at their property.
It also allows the system to make intelligent decisions to ensure stored power is used to negate peak demands on the grid, such as switching between air conditioning units within a property or enabling the system to switch off an air conditioning unit for five minutes each hour. While that makes a slight difference to an individual user, it allows the entire neighbourhood to manage switching between properties to ensure the development can avoid instances such as network blackouts during heatwaves.
While the data collection by Energy Queensland and EDQ occurs across the two-year window, each homeowner will have 20 HEMS signals that will occur on their property, and all those events will happen across the two-year pilot.
“When EDQ decided to instigate this trial, Evergen was the logical partner as our product requires no physical install. We can operate and manage almost any solar battery system, which allows us to work with any developer on almost any hardware,” Hutt said.
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“If a consumer has excess solar being generated and it goes back into the grid, we’re going to get to the point where they will no longer be compensated for that. If they can use that power somewhere in their home – by charging their electric vehicle as an example – then it’s beneficial for them and beneficial for the community.”
The approach at Carseldine Village has been co-designed so that the project can be replicated at scale for new developments in the future. It has been designed to incorporate solar capability and efficiencies into the long-term strategic energy planning for a region.
Evergen’s participation in the Carseldine Village project follows on from its work on Mirvac’s ‘House with No Bills’ study in 2018. Eco-friendly design and technology innovations were incorporated into the House with No Bills to reduce its reliance on grid electricity included an Evergen solar and battery system featuring intelligent energy management. This initiative builds on early innovation in the ACT in Ginninderry with solar and battery. It now includes collaboration with the network and devices behind the meter, such as air conditioning.
Across 12 months, the House with No Bills used only eight per cent more electricity than it generated and operated as ‘energy positive’ for five months, with the real possibility of the home having zero energy bills in the future.
