As Aotearoa New Zealand moves towards a low-emission energy future, the Electricity Distribution Business (EDB) Challenge aims to find innovative solutions to electrification challenges faced by EDBs.
The EDB Challenge is an initiative by Ara Ake, designed to bring together electricity distribution businesses and innovators to collaboratively tackle decarbonisation challenges.
This challenge saw Ara Ake working closely with EDBs to identify and articulate their specific problems and conducting a global search for innovative solutions to pilot on New Zealand's electricity distribution networks. The challenge addressed the complexities of investing in, managing, and operating electricity networks to support New Zealand's decarbonisation goals, while ensuring a reliable and equitable electricity distribution service. The outcome was eight EDBs partnering with four global innovators, committing to pilot projects.
After a year of testing, these pilots are nearing completion, and the lessons and insights gained from them are ready to be shared.
EDBs were specifically seeking pilot-ready technologies that could:
- Optimise visibility, management, and forecasting of peak demand and network constraints.
- Forecast, visualise, and integrate the network impact of electricity demand growth, distributed energy resources (DERs), and flexibility services into asset management, planning and operations.
- Expedite the DER connection process, with a focus on network impact assessment.
Learnings and insights report
With the finishing of the pilots, the report aims to share the key learnings and insights from the seven pilots to help collectively accelerate New Zealand’s energy transition. The report shares valuable insights and recommendations from the EDB Challenge, including the need for policies that make it easier to access and use smart meter data.
The EDBs
The Innovators
Timeline
- Jun 2022: EDBs engaged and problem statement workshop
- Oct 2022: Global search for innovators to address issues
- Nov 2022: Pitch event with winning pilots announced at event
- Jan 2023: Pilots underway
- Dec 2023: Pilots complete and reviews started
- Oct 2024: Summary and learnings report published
Media Releases
Innovation Challenge
8 Sept 2022: Ara Ake, the future energy centre of Aotearoa, alongside US-based partner Elemental Excelerator, have launched a global innovator search for a “Decarbonisation Challenge”.
Finalists Announced - Strong global interest in New Zealand Decarbonisation Challenge
07 Nov 2022: Ara Ake has welcomed the strong international interest in its EDB Decarbonisation Challenge, with five of the six finalists being from offshore.
ANSA, Future Grid and Gridsight: Winners of New Zealand Decarbonisation Global Challenge
18 Nov 2022: Last night, New Zealand’s future energy centre, Ara Ake, announced the winners of its Decarbonisation Challenge at its final pitch event in New Plymouth
New partnership launched in South Auckland to drive sustainable energy solutions
15 Jun 2023: Following on from the Decarbonisation Challenge pitch event, another pilot has emerged in collaboration between Counties Energy, OpenLoop, Europe-based Plexigrid and Ara Ake