This guide aims to assist organisations involved in the Australian electricity network specifically with the deployment, monitoring and orchestration/active management of Distributed Energy Resources (DER), via the creation of a standardised minimum communication protocol to assist in their operation in Australia.
Australia is experiencing an ever-increasing uptake of DER – leading the world in rates of household solar and an emerging uptake of newer resources like energy storage and electric vehicles. The opportunity presents to use the interoperability capabilities of modern technology to harness the full value of these devices to benefit consumers, electricity networks and the broader power system. More parties are becoming interested in using these resources for a broad range of uses, from increasing network visibility to providing local network services that can allow consumers to engage in new markets and maximise their investment in DER.
This guide is focussed on the visibility (both static and near-real-time) of DER and their active management through the provision of dynamic (real power) import and export limits1. This will enable a consistent approach to the active management of DER relevant to the Australian context, by ensuring DER, DER operators and related parties operate in a consistent and understood manner that is essential for network management and that will enable the integration across different Australian jurisdictions as seamlessly as possible, as well as making operations in other countries possible with minimal alteration (where those relevant standards have been chosen).
This ‘Common Smart Inverter Profile – Australia’ is developed by the DER Integration API Technical Working Group (DERIAPITWG)2. This working group formed in 2019 as a collaboration of Australian energy sector businesses from across the supply chain, including numerous distribution networks, retailers, equipment manufacturers and aggregators. The group determined that the most appropriate starting point to promote interoperability amongst DER and DNSPs in Australia was to leverage existing
1 The technical working group identified these as priority use cases for the standardisation of communication and behaviour of DER, given the current state of maturity of active DER management in Australia. Other identified use cases may be incorporated at a later stage, and can be found separately in the DER Use Case document.
2 For more information on the working group, please contact Tim Moore (timothy.moore1@anu.edu.au).
standards, namely the IEEE 2030.5-2018 specification3, and the Common Smart Inverter Profile (CSIP)4. These standards were chosen principally due to their coverage of relevant data communications, and uptake in related international jurisdictions.
Where the group has determined it necessary to meet Australian requirements, additional extensions or clarifications are proposed to meet these additional requirements.
This does not preclude that other industry standards could be adopted for different use cases but is not the focus of this document.