Our Strategy
By combining intermittent renewables with fast-start firming assets, we offer our customers reliable and competitively priced clean energy.
The Utility of the Future
We generate and source renewable energy
We generate renewable energy from our fleet of owned wind farms. With a total of 1299MW of nameplate capacity, it is one of the largest renewable energy fleets in Australia.
We also source renewable energy from third parties where we contract to purchase their output under long term Power Purchase Agreements. This diversifies our supply and enables us to serve a growing customer base.
We add value by firming
Because renewable energy is inherently intermittent, and because customers need electricity on demand, flexible, fast-start assets are needed to manage intermittency risks.
Our firming portfolio comprises Smithfield OCGT, a 123MW gas peaker in NSW, the Lake Bonney Battery, a 25MW/52MWh battery in SA, Bolivar Power Station with 120MW of dual-fuel peaking capacity in SA, and the Wallgrove Grid Battery in NSW.
Firming assets operate with very low levels of utilisation (sometimes as low as 2%) and because they are used to manage intermittency risk, Iberdrola Australia's economic outcomes are not directly correlated with their output.
We provide customers with reliable and competitively priced clean energy
By combining a diversified fleet of renewable generators with a portfolio of flexible, fast-start assets, we can provide customers with firm supplies of clean energy in a way that minimises their bills.
Because more than 95% of our generation is renewable and because we can still serve customers on demand, our model has been called 'the utility of the future'
What is 'firm' clean energy?
Customers need electricity on demand. They need it when the wind is still and when the sun goes down. A “firm” renewable energy supply is one where the retailer – Iberdrola Australia – manages the intermittency risk associated with wind and solar generation.
‘Firm’ supplies of renewable energy contrast with traditional Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs). While PPAs generally provide a customer with a fixed price product, they only provide electricity when the renewable generator is producing. This leaves the customer exposed to the intermittency risk. In short, if the wind is not blowing, the customer is fully exposed to the volatile spot electricity market.
At Iberdrola Australia, we combine our diversified fleet of renewable energy assets with our portfolio of flexible, fast-start firming assets – our gas peakers and our battery. This portfolio mix enables us to provide customers with renewable electricity products that have both a fixed price and a fixed volume, protecting them from the volatile prices in spot electricity markets. Industry analysts are calling us ‘the utility of the future’.