An innovative Virtual Energy Network (VEN) is demonstrating the potential to help Port of Brisbane supersize its investment in solar energy and improve its bottom line.
Momentum Energy’s VEN leverages the Enosi Powertracer Platform to facilitate the seamless virtual transfer of the benefits of locally generated solar energy across Port of Brisbane sites.
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The VEN enables commercial and industrial customers to virtually share the benefits of their excess solar between multiple sites, financially offsetting their energy consumption from the grid. The VEN will soon be available to small business customers as well.
Momentum’s VEN is particularly suited for organisations that produce more solar than they can use at a single location and want to ‘share’ that across locations that can’t host a solar array, that want to reduce power costs with solar, and that prefer to trade their own solar than purchase and transfer Large Scale Generation Certificates (LGCs).
The Port of Brisbane is Momentum’s first Virtual Energy Network customer. When it built its International Cruise Terminal in 2020, it installed an 800kW rooftop solar system that generated more electricity than it could use at the passenger terminal.
Under the VEN, Port of Brisbane can now virtually share the benefits of that locally generated solar across its other PBPL-operated sites at the Port.
Instead of Port of Brisbane receiving a small feed-in tariff, Momentum financially offsets that excess solar production against the energy used at other PBPL-operated sites, which has led to significant energy cost savings and greater utilisation of solar generated.
Momentum Energy managing director Lisa Chiba said that while the Port of Brisbane VEN was about maximising the benefits of an existing solar installation, other businesses might utilise a VEN to invest in larger solar arrays than originally planned.
“With a faster return on investment, Momentum’s VEN might incentivise C&I customers to invest in solar on a much larger scale than they normally would,” she said.
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Participation in the VEN is currently open to eligible commercial and industrial customers who have an energy contract with Momentum. In the Port of Brisbane’s case, they have a Corporate Power Purchase Agreement (CPPA) through which they purchase renewable energy certificates (LGCs) from the Granville Harbour Wind Farm in Tasmania.
Momentum Energy is owned by Hydro Tasmania, Australia’s largest generator of renewable energy.
