3 Current technology and market status

Even though SPC/H seem to be a narrowly focused topic, complexity arises while research proceeds due to the ever-branching questions of who, what and how, in terms of technology, control, control mechanisms, benefits, possible market response to benefits, and considerations about pricing, incentives, messaging, house quality and system integration. The review scope of current technology, market status, and consumers’ perspective of this report focuses on issues related to SPC while the scenario modelling work has considered both SPC and SPH.

The matrix in Figure 3-1 illustrates the diversity of control requirements and benefits, for SPC/H depending on roles and solar power source. In all cases there are preconditions of tariffs, incentives, messaging, control technologies and house quality, for each of which there will be a range of possibilities depending on application. The vertical purple bands indicate how control may be the responsibility for one of three possible actors: the householder, the network business, or a third party that would interface with and bundle a group of households. The benefits are different for each of these roles, and will differ depending if the power is from a householder’s own rooftop PV, or is from excess grid capacity, as shown in the green horizontal bands. There are also benefits that would be experienced beyond these roles in the broader community, shown in the matrix as community benefits spanning the full width. These are expected to be reduced household electricity costs particularly helping those in fuel poverty to improve their thermal comfort and thus health and well-being, and a reduction in barriers to installing rooftop PVs and feeding to the grid.

Figure 3-1. Complexity in solar pre-cooling

The alignment of solar availability with residential cooling requirements has generated large-scale interest in the development of solar assisted comfort cooling technologies across the world. The intersection of decarbonising the energy sector and rapidly increasing global cooling demand due to increased economic prosperity in tropical countries is a global driver of accelerating this technology development [14]. However, residential solar assisted cooling is still an emerging opportunity to reduce electricity demand from the grid and improve the energy footprint of the built environment. The literature scan below is focused on the status of solar pre-cooling that is suitable for residential applications and identified technology and market status in Australia.