Energy Storage Roadmap announced

Standards Australia has announced that it will embark on the process of developing an Energy Storage Roadmap with the support of the COAG Energy Council.

The aim of the roadmap is to improve regulatory frameworks to support the adoption and safe application of emerging energy storage technologies. One aspect of this will be the development of new Australian Standards for the safety and interoperability of batteries.

Standards Australia will undertake extensive consultations with industry, government, consumers and academia to examine what standards may be needed, which existing standards should be revised and how Australia should engage with international work in residential and small-scale energy storage.

Round one consultations

After preliminary discussions with industry and government, the first round of consultations will focus on small-scale commercial and residential energy storage. The round one consultation paper, released on 19 May, invites submissions up until 5 pm on Wednesday, 8 June 2016.

In response to preliminary consultations with industry and government, the first round of open submissions must focus on all current and emerging technologies for residential and small-scale storage, which is limited to stationary electrical energy storage systems of greater than 1 kWh and less than 200 kWh.

Round one submissions should focus on the following areas in relation to small-scale commercial and residential energy storage systems:

• Safety of installation: Installation and safety requirements of battery energy systems where the battery is installed on-site in an enclosure or battery room and is connected with power conversion equipment to supply electric power to other parts of the electrical installation.
• Product standards: Identification of documents for product-related standards such as performance management and the ability to deal with Australian-unique conditions (eg, temperature).
• Grid integration: Grid connection of battery storage systems including via inverters, demand response enabling devices (DRED) and non-DRED.
• Recycling, handling and transport: Safe recycling of storage technology, and handling and transport standards process for battery storage.
• Training: Training guidelines and/or accreditation programs for installers.

While contributors are asked to provide submissions specific to the stationary technologies outlined in the consultation paper, suggestions of other technologies that should be included are also invited. Additionally, contributors are asked to consider whether Australia should await standards to be released by the International Electrotechnical Commission that are currently in the drafting process before developing its own standards.

The second round of consultations will focus on identifying the key priorities emerging from the first round of submissions. Following the identification of priorities, a forum is forecast for late July. At this stage, it is intended for the Energy Storage Roadmap to be finalised and released by the end of October 2016.