The Australian Renewable Energy Association (ARENA) and Australian electricity generation and retail company AGL Energy have announced their intent to demonstrate the world’s largest virtual power plant to date. Planned to draw together a thousand home battery units in South Australia, the system will be capable of storing up to 7 Mwh of energy disseminated across Adelaide, with a combined output equivalent to a 5 MW peaker plant.

To help get the project off the ground, AGL will offer heavily discounted 5-7.7 kWh battery units to local residents. In exchange, these batteries will be connected to a cloud-connected control system that can direct their output simultaneously, helping the Grid stabilise itself against sudden blips in electricity generation.

ARENA and AGL plan to connect 150 households by April 2017, building up to 1000 over the following year.