Technology Guidelines

This priority area is about improving the safety and quality of solar products by setting exceptional industry benchmarks. Our guiding principles to achieve this are:

Guiding principle 1 – Adopt leading safety and performance specifications: Implementing leading eligibility criteria above industry minimum standards, and leading product warranties for key products such as PV modules, inverters, solar batteries, solar hot water and auxiliary equipment (such as connectors, DC isolators, protection, smoke detectors, earthing and bonding).

Guiding principle 2 – Raise the industry benchmark for installations: Full system outcomes considering end-to-end consumer benefits, including raising the bar on installer safety training requirements, mandating compliance to industry leading codes of conduct, and leading work-quality warranty requirements and the promotion of quality assurance frameworks for businesses.

Guiding principle 3 – Promote system monitoring to increase consumer outcomes: Promotion of real time monitoring platforms and devices that inform consumers of their energy usage, energy efficiency and behaviours, help premises save on their energy bills, facilitate remote visibility, diagnostics and weather forecasting, and inform when preventative or reactive maintenance is required.

This priority area is about promoting and enhancing integration of solar systems into the grid. Our guiding principles to achieve this are:

Guiding principle 4 – Encourage self-consumption of generated electricity: Shifting the time and usage of electricity at the customer level leads to direct bill savings and collectively provides wider grid benefits such as reducing network peak demand, which in turn puts downwards pressure on network expenditure and its associated passed-on costs for all energy participants.

Guiding principle 5 – Support grid performance and stability: Transitioning from passive to active distributed energy resources (DER). DER that helps maintain power system stability including through grid support response modes (Volt/Var, Volt/Watt, Freq/Watt), fault withstand (disturbance ride-through) settings, and Emergency Backstop Capability and others to address wider network challenges.

Guiding principle 6 – Promote interoperability through enhanced communications: Future proofing DER by mandating enhanced communications and internet connectivity capabilities. Promoting an industry developed ‘IoT’ approach that standardises interoperability in the Australian context to unlock the latent potential of aggregated/orchestrated DER.

This priority area is about maximising the integration of solar systems into the grid through innovative solutions. Our guiding principles to achieve this are:

Guiding principle 7 – Promote energy market participation: Promotion of virtual power plants (VPPs) and broader aggregation to enable DER to participate in current and future energy markets at scale. Current and future energy markets will provide immense opportunities with emphasis on unlocking new revenue streams and increased consumer outcomes.

Guiding principle 8 – Recognise the role and value of data: The secure collection and dissemination of data has benefits not only for consumers but also grid and market operators at all levels. Customer benefits include optimised energy usage and recognising ‘portability’ of data, access considerations, cyber security and consumer protections. Network benefits include increased visibility of the low voltage (LV) network, ability to identify constraint areas, and increased visibility of DER penetration and capacity, helping to improve planning, forecasting and operations.

Guiding principle 9 – Investigate innovative system solutions: Solar Victoria acknowledges its responsibility in looking forward towards new developments and initiatives in the dynamic transformation of Australia’s electricity network, such as the impact of Electric Vehicles (EVs/V2G/G2V), de-carbonization through electrification initiatives, unconventional energy storage (e.g. ‘solar soaking’ through hot water services and space heating/cooling), gamification of household energy usage and countless others.