From June 2020 to March 2021, Infratec worked to develop and test first of a kind services for battery energy storage systems (BESS) in New Zealand.

The research project was delivered using Alpine Energy’s BESS in Timaru. To enable the trial Transpower provided its enhanced distributed energy resource management system (DERMS), FlexPointTM in collaboration with Infratec. FlexPointTM allows Transpower to call, monitor M&V and manage distributed energy resources (DER) of all types across New Zealand in support of The National Grid.

The technical apparatus used to deliver the work included:

• A 90kW/144kWh Alpine Energy BESS

• A customised PLC and high-resolution meter installed and managed by Infratec.

• A OpenADR certified GRIDLink remote terminal unit (RTU) provided by Transpower that allowed fully automated secure, demand response (DR) communications between FlexPoint and the BESS.

Transpower’s FlexPoint sent event commands and received real-time information, such as state of charge and frequency, via a secure internet connection to GRIDLink ADR.

The project was a collaboration with expert services provided by Infratec and contractors PowerItFWD and Query. Transpower provided enhancements to its platforms throughout the project as knowledge was gained.