AWS and VTS launch Diverge to accelerate Australia's renewable energy shift

Amid Australia's promise to triple global renewable energy capacity and double annual energy efficiency improvements by 2030, two companies have partnered to facilitate this change.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Vector Technology Solutions (VTS) of New Zealand have developed the platform Diverge. Aimed at assisting energy companies to manage renewable power sources, Diverge optimises high-frequency data from smart electricity and gas meters in homes and businesses, enabling a greater understanding of energy supply and demand across the grid.

Diverge will also enable Australian utility companies to meet industry-required spot pricing with the mandated 5-minute settlement period requirement according to the Australian Energy Market Commission.

Australia is expected to lead worldwide usage of this technology, with over one million smart energy meters across Australia and New Zealand. This technology will contribute significantly to the country's transition from non-renewable to renewable energy resources such as solar and wind.

AWS and VTS launched Diverge as part of their strategic alliance formed in 2020. The platform allows energy companies to manage the transition to cleaner energy as the industry adopts renewable sources like solar and wind.

Diverge processes high-frequency data from smart meters installed in residences and corporate settings, providing data insights that grid operators can use to plan, build, and manage their networks more effectively. This visibility can improve outage detection and restoration capabilities, demonstrate the impact of distributed energy resources, and optimise service delivery to customers, the company states.

Diverge is a serverless cloud-native platform that scales to accommodate an increasing number of smart meters, ensuring timely delivery of data to energy companies. All data hosted on the platform is fully encrypted, benefiting from the security provided by AWS's cloud infrastructure. The platform leverages VTS's deep energy expertise and AWS's breadth of data analytics and compute infrastructure services.

Neil Williams, CEO at Vector Metering, said, "By using Diverge, we're providing and developing innovative services for our customers that deliver and respond to their needs, including the growing demand for renewable energy."

"With Diverge, we can deliver five-minute settlement data to our Australian customers, hours earlier and more reliably. It also gives us the ability to support other data services, such as power quality data, without impacting billing and settlement data."

VTS and AWS plan to focus on developing deeper insights for customers, expanding the usage of Diverge, and growing globally. Shailesh Manga, COO at VTS, was enthused about the future of Diverge, stating, "Diverge enables vast amounts of energy data to be quickly and securely processed and analysed. We're excited to see the growing adoption of Diverge and look forward to launching Diverge in other countries around the world."

Sarah Cooper, General Manager of Industry Products at AWS, highlighted the importance of innovative solutions like Diverge, "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."

"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."