Australia’s national science agency — CSIRO — will lead a new $11 million project that involves up to 200 buildings and strives to drive the development of new technology, empowering consumers to have more control over their electricity usage, save money and ease pressure on the energy grid.

The Digital Infrastructure Energy Flexibility (DIEF) pilot project is very different from traditional rigid energy network infrastructures and aims to provide new technologies and market processes, while offering new ways to lessen the load on the energy grid during busy periods, lower costs and reduce peak demand.

Property owners involved in this pilot project will be able to:

• receive data from external providers such as the electricity market and the Bureau of Meteorology
• collect and share data from the buildings to their service providers
• build innovative software applications for sophisticated management of building carbon emissions
• identify opportunities for energy flexibility and productivity improvements
• connect with service providers to resolve common data-related issues
• discover cost trends

All of this will be made possible through a software platform known as Data Clearing House (DCH).

Developed by CSIRO, the DCH Platform is not only involved in the company’s Smart Energy Mission but will also serve as the digital infrastructure for DIEF.

The project consortium supporting DIEF are responsible for funding, research outcomes, coordinating artificial intelligence competitions and onboarding buildings onto the digital platform.

All buildings involved in the pilot are chosen by the project consortium and will be connected to the DCH Platform.

From there, the platform expects to gain access to devices that consume over five megawatts of power from the grid — which is up to 0.08 per cent of the total demand in NSW.

The power usage of these devices will then be intelligently controlled to sync up with high renewable energy generation periods.

CSIRO Energy Director Dr Dietmar Tourbier said the DIEF project will benefit both consumers and the industry by improving the viability and uptake in flexible demand.

“Flexible demand is critical because it ensures grid stability, reduces costs, supports increasing renewable energy integration, and enables a more sustainable and efficient energy system.

“This project has the potential to create a new ecosystem of technologies and solutions that will give consumers more control over their energy bills and emissions,” said Dr Tourbier.

The NSW Consortium includes: CSIRO, the NSW Government, Amber Electric, DNA Energy, EVSE Australia, Nube iO, Property and Development NSW, RACE for 2030 CRC, UNSW, UOW and Wattwatchers.

The DIEF project received at total of $3.75 million in funding from the NSW Government under the Net Zero Plan Stage 1: 2020 – 2023.