Our stories Project Jupiter and Symphony WA is leading the charge in integrating locally enerated energy into the State’s main electricity network and at the heart of this transformation is Project Jupiter. Supported by a $20.8 million grant from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), announced in January 2025, this three-year initiative is building the functionality needed to enable rooftop solar and home batteries to operate not just as individual energy sources, but as a coordinated and valuable part of the grid, and at scale. Project Jupiter is the continuation of the Project Symphony pilot, which won the Energy Innovation of the Year Award at the 2024 WA Energy Awards, after it proved it was possible for virtual power plants to operate in WA. Project Jupiter takes this from concept to reality, developing the functionality needed to enable wide-scale participation in virtual power plants (VPPs) across the network.
Led by Western Power, in collaboration with Synergy, AEMO, and Energy Policy WA, Project Jupiter will scale up the use of VPPs – networks of distributed energy resources (DER) like rooftop solar and home batteries – to allow households to share energy with the grid. By coordinating solar panels, batteries, and other devices through customer participation in VPPs, these assets can provide many of the same services as traditional power stations. This helps ease pressure on the network and returns greater value to customers who generate and store their own energy while making better use of existing infrastructure. Project Jupiter is moving VPPs from concept to reality, developing the market settings, customer products, education, and regulatory reform needed to bring them into everyday use and enabling customers to gain greater value from the assets they own.
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Western Power Annual Report 2025
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