Imagine a world where businesses could generate power, take control of their energy needs, and in doing so, operate more flexibly, efficiently and sustainably.
The good news, thanks to our recent partnership with Infratec, is that this cutting edge technology is available to businesses today in the form of renewable generation, battery storage, and energy management solutions.
The partnership combines Contact’s access to markets, energy relationships and expertise in renewable generation, with Infratec’s track record in implementing large scale, grid- connected and off-grid renewable energy systems around the world.
Teaming up with Infratec supports our goal of leading New Zealand in decarbonising the energy sector and helps make the transition to low carbon energy as seamless and painless as possible. The upshot for businesses is that they get access to complete end-to-end solutions at a significantly lower risk than if they had gone to market for these solutions themselves.
Businesses are ideally placed to take advantage of renewable energy products like rooftop solar because they use most of their electricity during the day when these systems produce the most power.
Other benefits from on-site generation and storage can include greater visibility into power use, and greater flexibility in how and when they use energy. By incorporating battery storage, business can also increase their resilience in the event of power cuts.
We’ve certainly found resiliency to be a real benefit to customers participating in our two-year residential trial in Wellington and Christchurch, where we’ve installed solar and battery systems across a number of homes so residents can continue to use electricity even if the grid suffers an outage. The two-year trial is expected to be completed in mid-2019.
On the business side we’re using what we’ve learned in the trials to develop technology that enables businesses to connect their electrical equipment such as heating, hot water systems, refrigeration and heat pumps to a central platform, so that they can get paid for being flexible with when and how they use energy.
It’s a system that will let us power down or turn off their equipment when there’s high demand on the National Grid. By participating, businesses can help balance out those peaks in electricity demand, potentially reduce the country’s reliance on fossil fuels which kick in when there’s not enough renewable energy in the system, and ultimately help reduce energy sector emissions.
To find out more about our new energy system solutions get in touch with your Contact representative.