Demand Management Technology

Ms LUETHEN (King) (14:33): My question is to the Minister for Energy and Mining. Can the minister update the house on how demand management technology is helping to lower prices for South Australians?

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart—Minister for Energy and Mining) (14:33): Thank you to the member for King for this question too and, yes, I can. As everybody in this house knows, we took a very clear energy policy to the last election. We are determined—

Mr Picton: $300.

The SPEAKER: The member for Kaurna is warned.

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: —to reduce the cost of electricity, make it more reliable, more resilient, and also make it cleaner for all South Australians. As you also know, we took a multipronged policy to the election. One of those key prongs is demand management—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. D.C. VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: —which the member for King asks about. This is cutting-edge technology around the world, and we are determined in South Australia to lead in every different aspect of the delivery of more affordable, more reliable and cleaner electricity for all South Australians.

Demand management is a relatively new aspect in world terms and even in South Australia, but we do now have five virtual power plant offerings from retailers in South Australia. They are actually being taken up because they are very complementary with our Home Battery Scheme, which is growing and gaining momentum all the time. But one of the things we announced before the election, and have delivered after the election, is a $11 million fund to partner with industry and other organisations for the trial of new demand response technology, and we are doing that because we know this will be good for all South Australians.

Interestingly, people think of batteries as purely about storage, but it is actually about demand management. You are managing your demand, you are managing where you get it from. Do you get it from the grid or do you get it from your battery? The virtual power plants are very much about aggregating hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of consumers' demands so that consumers voluntarily surrender some of the control of their demand for electricity in return for a financial benefit, so it's a win-win.

But to extend that even further, what happens is when the aggregator connects hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of electricity consumers and is able to have access to use a thin slice of each of their demand, that aggregator then actually controls quite a lot of electricity. That aggregator then has a lot of electricity that can be supplied into the grid at times that it's needed, so then all other South Australian electricity consumers, not just those participating actively in a program like this, get a win as well. Reaching and being able to deliver peak electricity demand is one of the things that has pushed up the cost of electricity over the last 10 to 15 years.

So we are working on getting the cost of electricity down in the wholesale market. We are working on interconnection. We are working on large-scale batteries, small-scale batteries, and we are working on demand management as well. We have announced three programs so far, one with company Embertec, which will trial how existing air conditioners can be optimised to better manage peak demand; with company Enel X, which will look at how small commercial energy users can maximise their investment in backup generators while helping to make energy more secure and reliable for all consumers; and with company Amber Electric, which will trial permanent automated demand response aiming to show how customers can save on their power bills by having a large appliance in their home turn off, up or down based on real-time wholesale prices. We are delivering on the things that we said we would deliver on.