Vector says the "electrification" of everything from cars to public transport to heating is happening at a rapid clip - at the same time as utilities are switching to renewables and more complicated distribution. Photo / 123RF
Vector says the "electrification" of everything from cars to public transport to heating is happening at a rapid clip - at the same time as utilities are switching to renewables and more complicated distribution. Photo / 123RF
Lots of “smart” power meters haven’t been used for much beyond billing.
But Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Vector Technology Solutions (VTS) this week said more than a million smart energy meters in Australia and New Zealand are now running on Diverge, a data and analytics energy platform co-developed bythe two firms.
Both pitch Diverge as a product that can be sold to utilities in multiple countries.
The pair pitch Diverge as a tool for quickly analysing huge amounts of data for better network management and future network design, and to accommodate the trend to “greater electrification” as VTS chief operating officer Shailesh Manga puts it.
Power used to mean running your hot water cylinder, stove, heating and lights. Now there’s a surge of electric vehicles, solar panels are appearing on roofs and Manga sees the emergence of “prosumer” customers who want to sell power back to the grid. At the same time, public transport is electrifying and a lot of businesses are trying to reduce their emissions, and the companies that generate power are shifting toward greener sources.
AWS and Vector first signed a strategic alliance to co-develop new technologies in 2020 - making the Kiwi lines company the first customer for the Amazon unit’s smart meter and smart grid push (Duke Energy, which provides power in several US states, later signed on too).
The commercial ground has shifted since.
In June this year, the NZX-listed Vector finalised the sale of 50 per cent of its smart metering business to Brisbane-based, state government-owned Queensland Investment Corporation in a $1.75 billion deal (the proceeds were used to pay down debt, which was more than halved from its previous $3.41b.)
Vector Metering is the joint venture created to manage the 50:50 Vector-QIC smart metering business, while Vector Technology Solutions is a fully-owned Vector subsidiary.
At the time of the deal, Vector said it was managing a total of 2.09 million “advanced meters” across Australia and NZ, 578,000 of them across the Tasman.
“By the end of 2024 we expect to have all Vector Metering electricity meters in both countries on the Diverge platform, which will be part of an ongoing upgrade programme,” a Vector spokesman told the Herald this week.
VTS and AWS have extended their strategic alliance until 2025.
Sell it to the world
“We are excited about the tangible strides we’ve made towards accelerating the world’s energy transition and look forward to helping VTS expand Diverge globally,” AWS general manager of products Sarah Cooper said.
Manga said there were no intellectual property issues; it was clearly delineated which parts of the technology were running on tools created by Amazon, and which had been developed by Vector.
And although there’s no immediate timeline, VTS’s ambitions are big.
“We’re excited to see growing adoption of Diverge and look forward to launching Diverge in other countries around the world,” Manga said.
His immediate focus has been closer to home. Vector Meeting - as VTS’s customer under the post-sale modus operandi - is the party that actually deals with utilities on either side of the Tasman, upselling them from consumption data to taking advantage of smart meter’s capability, via Diverge, to evolve from devices that track individual properties’ consumption to collecting and analysting network operational data.
“We’re dealing with a significant uptake of renewables, and huge amounts of electrification is happening, and that transition is happening quite rapidly,” Manga said.
“And a huge part of dealing with that challenge is: how do you create visibility of what’s going on in the network, right down to the voltages at the edges? When you have that visibility, you can actually start operating the network in a more optimised way and start predicting what’s going to happen in the future and how you plan your infrastructure.”
“We’re excited to see growing adoption of Diverge and look forward to launching Diverge in other countries around the world.”
AWS has entered an agreement to purchase half the output from Mercury's new 103MW Turitea South wind farm near Palmerston North - part of a wider deal with the power company to supply 100 per cent renewable energy to its "Auckland Region" of hyperscale data centres, currently under construction.
AWS itself part of NZ’s changing power landscape
With its staggering $7.5 billion investment in new hyperscale data centres currently under construction in Northwest Auckland, AWS is part of the huge shift in our power landscape that Diverge seeks to address.
Vector CEO Simon Mackenzie earlier told the Herald that the new giant data centres being built by AWS, and its rivals including Microsoft, will consume 200 megawatts of electricity at peak usage - roughly the amount required to power some 200,000 homes. For context, the average demand in Auckland today is about 1700MW. (A study for MBIE said 220MW by 2030 as the hyperscale data centres gradually come online. Most are being built in several phases). Mackenzie said the timeframe allowed for management.
On the green side of the ledger, hyperscale data centres should in theory be more efficient than the “on-premise” servers at various businesses that they will replace. And AWS has inked a deal with Mercury to supply 100 per cent renewable energy for its Auckland Region (as its new data centres are called). The deal includes AWS’s purchase of half the output from Mercury’s new 103MW Turitea South wind farm near Palmerston North.
It mirrors other deals by the Amazon giant around the world. Globally, AWS says it will reach its goal of 100 per cent renewable power five years early in 2025.
AWS says Diverge can be used to help manage power companies’ transition to cleaner energy, plus another complication: a shift from monumental power plants to many smaller installations.
“As the transition to cleaner energy and electrification accelerates, energy providers require bold and innovative solutions to manage the complexity that comes with intermittent and distributed energy resources,” AWS’s Cooper said.
“Leveraging AWS’s culture of innovation and working-backwards mechanism, we’ve developed a secure and scalable energy data platform that grid operators and energy companies can use to improve how they operate.”
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.
