WA’s Smart Connect Solar Rollout Done And Dusted

Home solar installation permission knockbacks should now be a thing of the past in regional Western Australia after the final phase of Horizon Power’s Smart Connect Solar initiative rolled out well ahead of schedule.

Before the initiative, residents and businesses in many towns across Horizon Power’s service area were locked out of rooftop solar power as a result of a lack of hosting capacity due to network limitations.

“Horizon Power established the strategic goal of zero customer refusals when connecting rooftop solar by 2025, to solve the technical challenges preventing customer access to rooftop solar,” says Horizon Power CEO, Stephanie Unwin. “Achieving this goal creates more customer choice to participate in renewable energy and ways to reduce energy bills.”

What Is Smart Connect Solar?

The initiative involves having an internet-connected box of tricks called a Secure Gateway Device (SGD) installed with a system, which enables Horizon Power to remotely throttle or switch off output in a scenario where the amount of electricity being exported into the grid threatens network stability. Horizon supplies and maintains the devices.

Horizon says Smart Connect Solar may result in an estimated reduction of 10% in solar electricity generated by a system over the course of a year.

The system is underpinned by Horizon’s Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS), which analyses weather patterns, power system conditions, and renewable energy resources. DERMS will also enable the company to integrate and balance energy across customer resources such as batteries and electric vehicles.

The first stage of the initiative was launched in February this year, with an aim of fully rolling out by the end of the year. The program has now been made available in its final eight towns.

“We are proud to have completed the roll-out of Smart Connect Solar ahead of schedule, so that thousands of additional customers can reap the benefits of renewables, including reduced energy bills, earlier than expected,” said Ms. Unwin.

Horizon Power is responsible for electricity generation, transmission and distribution in a service area covering 2.3 million square kilometres. The company services more than 36,000 households and 9,000 businesses across 38 microgrids. Electricity is delivered by 8,356 kilometres of overhead and underground transmission/ distribution lines.

WA’s State Government invested $6.36 million into the Smart Connect Solar project. You can read more about it here.

Western Australia A Rooftop Solar Powerhouse

Regional residents have been at a disadvantage up until recently, but outside Horizon’s service area PV installations continue to occur at a rapid clip; keeping Perth solar installers in particular pretty busy. More than half a million small-scale (<100 kW capacity) systems have been installed across Western Australia to date.

Residents of Perth and surrounding areas benefit from an extremely competitive market, where prices for systems are the lowest in Australia, and possibly the world. While feed in tariffs in WA are very low during much of the day, as elsewhere in Australia these days the name of the game is maximising self-consumption.

The Australian Photovoltaic Institute (APVI) estimates the percentage of houses in WA with PV installations to be 44.6%; trailing Queensland’s 50.5% and South Australia’s 49.9%.