The VPP, developed in collaboration with Nissan Australia and Wallbox, utilizes the university’s electric vehicle fleet to deliver a variety of grid services.

Sunverge, provider of an industry-leading distributed energy resource (DER) control, orchestration, and aggregation platform, announced today that the V2G virtual power plant (VPP) at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia is now operational and providing a variety of grid services. The project is one of the most advanced commercial applications of aggregated and managed bi-directional EV charging in support of the university’s business fleet electrification, microgrid operations, and wholesale market participation.

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From left to right: Flinders University Vice-Chancellor, Professor Colin Stirling, and South Australia Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Energy and Mining, Tom Koutsantonis (photo courtesy of ENGIE)

“We’re proud of the work we’ve done with ENGIE and Flinders University on this groundbreaking V2G project,” said Martin Milani, CEO of Sunverge. “Bi-directional EV charging is very new, and very few companies have mature products in the market today that can optimize against the multiple dynamic constraints on both sides of the meter. Such products are needed to effectively perform aggregated and orchestrated grid-aware bi-directional charging with a fleet of EVs. As the EV market rapidly matures, V2G services will give fleet operators new ways to save on charging costs, monetize their electric vehicle fleets, and provide grid operators with flexible and mobile assets to support a more flexible, reliable, and sustainable electric grid.”

“We’re pleased to partner with Flinders University and Sunverge to deliver this innovative project,” said Greg Schumann, Director of Green Mobility, ENGIE Australia & New Zealand. “By showing this V2G VPP’s flexibility and reliability, we can provide fleet and grid operators with tangible examples on how to transition to more sustainable forms of transportation.”

The Sunverge platform is managing the operations of the EV fleet, incorporating each vehicle’s driving constraints and ensuring that adequate operational charge is available for daily driving, while optimizing multiple V2G value streams including wholesale market price arbitrage, peak demand management, and optimization of behind-the-meter generation and demand. The Sunverge platform and its sophisticated, distributed and constraint-based stochastic algorithm, continuously optimizes against changing market prices while adhering to multiple dynamic constraints. These include EV availability, desired state of charge levels, as well as distribution and local grid network constraints.

“There has been a great deal of buzz around vehicle-to-grid VPPs, but very few operational projects that provide meaningful multi-service capabilities with a variety of grid services beyond just time-of-day managed charging and simple demand response. This project demonstrates the immense potential of utilizing the growing fleet of electric vehicles to provide system flexibility and critical T&D grid services,” Milani added. “This project also reveals valuable insights as Sunverge continues to lead the development of a true bi-directional V2G market in combination with PV generation and stationary storage. Sunverge is thereby demonstrating how to efficiently achieve a fully decarbonized & decentralized, highly flexible grid.”

About ENGIE

ENGIE Australia & New Zealand, a joint venture with Mitsui & Co Ltd, is accelerating the transition to a carbon-neutral economy by providing innovative, sustainable energy solutions to households, businesses, communities and cities. We have 1,100MW of low-carbon generation capacity and more than 2,00MW of renewable energy under development supporting the Group’s ambition of 50 GW in 2025. Our retail business, Simply Energy, has more than 740,000 gas and electricity customer accounts. We’re also delivering sustainability solutions to cities, precincts, and universities through our ENGIE Net Zero Energy Solutions team. ENGIE’s trading arm, Global Energy Management & Sales (GEMS) provides long-energy supply agreements, energy trading, risk management and asset management services to business customers across the ENGIE ANZ portfolio.

About Sunverge

Sunverge Energy provides the leading open dynamic platform for Virtual Power Plants (VPP), a grid-aware and dynamic power source built from the aggregation of behind-the-meter DERs (distributed energy resources). The Sunverge real time DER control, orchestration and aggregation platform is unique in providing dynamic multi-objective optimization of services on both sides of the meter, helping customers with intelligent management of their own renewable energy generation and utilities with greater flexibility in managing their infrastructure investments, reducing generation costs, increasing system reliability and meeting their renewable energy goals. Together with the Sunverge Infinity edge controller, the Sunverge VPP platform provides intelligent dynamic near real-time control over decentralized energy resources that is efficient, reliable, and responsive to utilities and their customers. For more information, please visit www.sunverge.com.

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