EnergyAustralia to pour USD 7m in Redback’s smart solar tech

Power producer and retailer EnergyAustralia has agreed to make a AUD-9.3-million (USD 7.1m/EUR 6.4m) investment in Redback Technologies Ltd in order to scale-up its smart solar technologies development operations.

“Our partnership with EnergyAustralia significantly accelerates Redback’s technology roadmap and strategic plan for leading the disruptive change required for mass adoption of renewables,” Redback founder and managing director, Philip Livingston, said.

Apart from sanctioning the funds, the local utility will also promote the Redback Generation 2 Smart Hybrid Solar Inverter System. EnergyAustralia, part of Hong Kong-based CLP Holdings Ltd (HKG:0002), will offer it to its 1.7 million customers across Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, the Australian Capital Territory and South Australia.

The solar inverter system can work with existing batteries or solar panels and includes Redback’s cloud enabled intelligent system for analytics and remote control, called the Ouija Board.

Hosted on Microsoft’s Azure Internet of Things (IoT) Suite cloud platform, the technology uses machine learning to gather intelligence from user preferences and external factors like the weather. It gives homeowners and commercial users options through a smartphone or other smart devices, for instance whether to use the energy right away, store it or sell it to the electricity grid.

(AUD 1.0 = USD 0.766/EUR 0.683)

Choose your newsletter by Renewables Now. Join for free!