Octopus Investments Deploys Fluence’s Automated Trading Platform At Australia’s Largest Solar Farm
Fluence’s Trading Platform will future-proof the 333 MW Darlington Point Solar Farm to manage its market trading and PPA commitments amid increasing market volatility.
MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA : Fluence, a leading energy storage technology and digital applications provider enabling the global clean energy transition, and Octopus Investments Australia, today announced that Octopus has deployed Fluence’s AI-powered Trading Platform to optimise the trading of the 333 MW Darlington Point Solar Farm in New South Wales (NSW).
Darlington Point is the nation’s largest operational solar power project, with output equivalent to powering 115,000 homes (approximately 5% of homes in NSW).
Octopus Investments will use Fluence’s Trading Platform to manage its market trading and PPA commitments by ensuring the Darlington Point Solar Farm maximises generation during favorable market conditions and responds to market price signals to avoid generation at times of over-supply and negative prices.
Darlington Point represents the latest example of the platform’s ability to integrate with a range of renewable energy assets, including wind and solar, as well as battery energy storage systems from any OEM or technology provider.
The Darlington Point Solar Farm is optimized by Fluence’s Trading Platform.
“We are really excited to be partnering with Fluence,” said Sam Reynolds, Managing Director of Octopus. “As proud owners of renewable energy assets, we are always striving to find innovative solutions that will improve asset performance for our investors. Solutions like this will help maximise revenue and investor returns by reducing price volatility, minimising costs and mitigating constraints.”
Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM) continues to undergo a significant transition as the country expands its share of renewable energy generation whilst accelerating the timing of legacy power plant retirements, resulting in greater volatility in wholesale energy markets.
In addition, later this year the NEM is shifting to ‘five-minute settlement’ where the market will be both dispatched and settled at five-minute intervals. This change will require renewable energy assets to possess extremely accurate price forecasting capabilities to navigate an increasingly volatile market.
Fluence’s Trading Platform analyses thousands of variables to provide leading price forecasting and optimisation using proprietary machine learning algorithms, enabling renewable asset owners like Octopus Investments to optimise bidding and dispatch. The resulting market-compliant bids can increase revenue for wind and solar asset owners by up to 10% over a 12-month period.
“The deployment of our AI-based trading platform at the largest solar farm in the NEM confirms that automated bidding tools are now firmly established as critical tools for operating renewable assets in the NEM,” said Seyed Madaeni, SVP & Chief Digital Officer of Fluence. “We’re excited to be supporting Octopus Investments and look forward to helping them navigate price volatility and constraints in an increasingly complex market.”
With this latest project with Octopus Investments, Fluence’s Trading Platform is now optimising a significant portion of all grid-scale solar and wind assets in the NEM. The significant momentum of Fluence’s Trading Platform in energy markets undergoing rapid transitions, such as the NEM in Australia and CAISO in California, speaks to the high demand from customers for technology to manage real-time bidding of increasingly complex portfolios of assets.
About Fluence
Fluence, a Siemens and AES company, is helping drive the global energy transition with grid-scale technology, products, and services that help customers maximize the value and performance of single projects or entire portfolios of assets. Fluence delivers energy storage and bidding optimization software products and engineering, delivery, and operational services to customers globally. The company has nearly 6 GW of storage and optimized bidding assets in operation or contracted in 29 markets.
