10723 (2024). Hon Dr Megan Woods to the Minister for Energy

10723 (2024). Hon Dr Megan Woods to the Minister for Energy: What new initiatives, if any, to enable residential demand flexibility have been initiated ahead of Winter 2024?

Hon Simeon Brown: I am advised that a variety of work is underway to better enable residential demand flexibility. For example, the Electricity Authority recently introduced spot market settlement based on real-time pricing. This supports the adoption of demand flexibility through price signals. The Electricity Authority also recently enhanced the "Dispatch Notification" mechanism, which allows small scale generation and aggregated resources, including aggregated residential demand flexibility, to directly participate in the spot market. A government funded trial involving solarZero has tested the use of flexibility from household batteries, aggregated to meet winter peaks. The new dispatch notification mechanism was used in the recent trial. I am advised that following the pilot, in response to the tight supply situation on 10 May, solarZero utilised their network of batteries to provide 30 megawatts of electricity to the grid.