The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has announced AUD 12.9 million (US$ 9.71 million) in funding to the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) for the development of a major Victorian Distributed Energy Resources (DER) Marketplace trial named Project Edge.

Based in the Hume region of northeast Victoria, the AUD 28 million (US$ 21.08 million) projects will see AEMO partner with network AusNet Services and Mondo to coordinate the development of a replicable model for the trading of electricity and grid services from DER that can be expanded across the National Electricity Market (NEM).

The three-year trial will create a prototype market for DER to be dispatched and traded as part of the NEM. Registered market participants, using customers’ DER, will submit bids to the market platform, and in turn will make these bids visible to distribution networks to increase the reliability and resilience of the whole system.

Project Edge will initially involve around 50 residential customers, but then scale up to 1000 residential, commercial and industrial customers. The trial will provide AEMO, AusNet, and Mondo visibility and active control of the DER, helping to reduce electricity costs for customers and managing challenges associated with a decentralized grid.

ARENA’s funding will assist the development of the software and systems underpinning the first DER marketplace in Australia, with the aim of providing necessary insight and visibility over the distribution electricity system to AEMO and network operators to optimally balance the provision of grid services, ancillary services and energy from DER within the operational constraints of the distribution network.