Researchers at UNSW Canberra have partnered with industry leaders Voltval and JT Solar Technology to pilot an AI-powered energy system designed to bring rooftop solar and battery storage to millions of Australians living in apartments.
Voltval and JT Solar have developed a Modular Power Portal System (MPPS) that combines rooftop solar generation with shared battery storage for apartment buildings.
The project is supported by a $1.2 million grant from the Australian Department of Education’s Trailblazer Recycling & Clean Energy (TRaCE) program.
UNSW researchers will add an advanced AI layer to the MPPS, allowing it to better predict and manage energy use across multiple properties.
The goal is to make the platform smarter, more efficient and ready for real-world deployment.
Australia is a global leader in rooftop solar uptake, but the benefits have largely bypassed the more than 2.5 million Australians who live in apartments.
In New South Wales, where one in five homes is an apartment, just 3.5 per cent of apartment dwellers currently have access to rooftop solar.
A number of factors have stalled solar adoption in apartment buildings, including complex shared ownership arrangements, outdated metering infrastructure and buildings that were never designed to support distributed energy systems.
These same challenges affect townhouses, mixed-use developments and commercial and industrial buildings, widening the gap in access to affordable energy across urban communities.
Dr Ripon Chakrabortty from the School of Systems & Computing at UNSW Canberra said the AI-enabled optimisation technologies developed at the university will create new models for clean energy deployment in high-density urban environments.
“Through this partnership, we will develop and validate advanced AI-enabled optimisation technologies that can intelligently coordinate shared solar and battery resources across multiple residents,” he said.
These technologies are designed to forecast energy generation and demand, coordinate distributed energy resources and balance electricity flows between apartments in real time.
Associate Professor Huadong Mo, who co-leads the project alongside Dr Chakrabortty, said the work is expected to increase renewable energy use and lower operating costs for participating buildings by as much as 30 per cent.
“The next phase of Australia’s clean energy transition will depend on ensuring that apartment residents can participate in the benefits of distributed energy resources,” he said.
The project includes a multi-site pilot spanning commercial and residential locations across Sydney.
Real-world performance data gathered during the pilot will validate the system for these initial site types and help build the evidence base needed to scale deployment across the wider range of building types the MPPS is designed to serve.
Director of JT Solar Technology, Jason (Jiangang) Xiao, said the partnership has strengthened the company’s path to market.
“The UNSW partnership has given us the research depth to properly validate what we have built and the confidence to take it to market,” he said.
“The same barriers holding back clean energy adoption in Sydney’s apartments and strata developments exist in dense urban environments worldwide.
“We believe the MPPS can help rapidly decarbonise buildings at scale and contribute to a more resilient and inclusive energy future.”
The pilot has also been made possible through contributions from key partners, including Beaumont Strata Management, Ocean Building Management, Piper Alderman, SAJ Electric, Squared-X and One Stop Warehouse.
The partnership is backed by the Trailblazer for Recycling and Clean Energy (TRaCE) Lab to Market grant, an Australian government program that pairs grant funding with dedicated commercialisation support to help accelerate clean energy innovations from prototype to market.
