UNSW, Voltval Pty Ltd and JT Solar Technology Pty Ltd have launched a research partnership, supported by a $1.2 million TRaCE grant, to pilot a groundbreaking AI-powered energy system designed to bring rooftop solar and battery storage to the millions of Australians in apartments and strata developments.
While Australia leads the world in rooftop solar uptake, the benefits have largely bypassed the more than 2.5 million Australians who live in apartments. In New South Wales, where one in five homes is an apartment, just 3.5% of apartment dwellers have access to rooftop solar. The challenge extends beyond residential buildings.
Complex shared ownership arrangements, outdated metering infrastructure, and buildings never designed for distributed energy have stalled solar adoption not only in residential apartments but across townhouses, mixed-use developments, and commercial and industrial buildings, deepening energy inequity in urban communities.
NSW Member for Strathfield Jason Yat-sen Li joined the launch event in Homebush to mark the beginning of the partnership. “One of the biggest challenges our country faces is in the energy transition… An innovation that assists that transition is of national interest,” said Mr Li. “Today, we are celebrating the collaboration between research partners and industry. It’s fantastic to see academic research being translated into a commercial product.”
At the centre of the partnership is a new shared solar and battery platform, known as the Modular Power Portal System (MPPS), a containerised energy platform developed by Voltval and JT Solar Technology that integrates rooftop solar PV with community-scale battery storage. Through the partnership with UNSW, the system is being enhanced with an AI-driven optimisation layer that enables it to forecast and optimise energy flows across multiple tenancies.
Led by Associate Professor Huadong Mo and Dr Ripon K. Chakrabortty from the School of Systems & Computing at UNSW Canberra, the research team brings decades of expertise in AI-driven energy systems to the project. Drawing on digital twin modelling, reinforcement learning techniques and cyberphysical energy systems, the team is developing AI optimisation tools that forecast energy generation and demand, coordinate distributed energy resources, and balance electricity flows between apartments in real-time. The project is also one of the first successes from the recently build Resilient and Intelligent Systems for clean Energy Research (RISER) Hub at the UNSW Canberra City Campus.
The enhanced system is projected to deliver higher renewable energy access and utilisation, reduce peak demand and improve reliability compared with conventional systems, while lowering operating costs for participating buildings by as much as 30 per cent.
“The next phase of Australia’s clean energy transition will depend on ensuring that apartment residents can participate in the benefits of distributed energy resources,” said Associate Professor Mo. “Through this partnership, we will develop and validate advanced AI-enabled optimisation technologies that can intelligently coordinate shared solar and battery resources across multiple residents. The knowledge generated through this pilot will help establish new models for clean energy deployment in high-density urban environments and support a more resilient, equitable and sustainable energy future,” added Dr Chakrabortty.
The launch marks the start of a multi-site pilot program spanning commercial and residential sites across Sydney. The real-world performance data generated will validate the system for these initial site types and build the evidence base needed to scale deployment across the broader range of building types the MPPS is designed to serve.
The pilot is made possible through the contributions of other key partners including Beaumont Strata Management, Ocean Building Management, SAJ Electric, Squared-X, One Stop Warehouse, and Piper Alderman, who have provided site access, supply chain, equipment infrastructure and legal support essential to the program.
The partnership is backed by the Trailblazer for Recycling and Clean Energy (TRaCE) Lab to Market grant, an Australian Government program that pairs grant funding with dedicated commercialisation support to accelerate clean energy innovations from prototype to market.
“We have spent years developing the MPPS alongside Voltval, informed by the real challenges we see in the field every day. The UNSW partnership has given us the research depth to properly validate what we have built and the confidence to take it to market,” said Jason (Jiangang) Xiao, Director of JT Solar Technology.
“The same barriers holding back clean energy adoption in Sydney’s apartments and strata developments exist in dense urban environments worldwide. We believe the MPPS can help rapidly decarbonise buildings at scale and contribute to a more resilient and inclusive energy future.”
