At AGL we’re in the business of transition.

We know Australia’s energy future will be affordable and smart – delivered from renewable sources that are backed by flexible energy storage technologies that come together to power our homes, businesses and vehicles.

That’s why we’re focussed on delivering innovative, scalable energy solutions that support our transition to a new energy system and put power back into the hands of our customers – such as our Virtual Power Plant (VPP).

In an Australian first, AGL recently delivered a fully integrated digital experience for our VPP customers – which means they can now view the performance of their solar and battery system alongside their billing data in our app and other digital channels.

So what does this mean for our customers?

We caught up with Dylan Verheijden, VPP customer and Head of Wholesale Platform (Build & Run) in AGL’s Integrated Energy Technology team to find out.

Dylan’s story

I started organising a solar and battery system for my home about a year ago, at the same time I joined AGL.

For me, it’s about playing my part in the transition to a lower carbon future – and I’m proud of the leadership role AGL is playing in this space.

I’ve had my Tesla battery since the start of the year. When the AGL app was first updated with solar and battery data, the first thing I did was pull out my Tesla and AGL apps and compare them. I quickly realised the AGL app offered me the same visibility of my solar generation and battery performance as the Tesla app. I can see my overall usage and track my data over time with daily and weekly graphs.

Having everything in the one app provides a single view of my energy usage and helps me stay on top of my bills.

My kids also find the charts fascinating. Even though they’re too young to fully understand them, they know how our solar panels and battery work, and often comment on how our electricity generation and battery must be going on sunny or cloudy days!

It’s been great to experience this as a customer but also to see what’s been involved behind the scenes to get us to this point.

My team builds the applications for a number of programs at AGL, including the back-end technology for our VPP. We have data scientists embedded in the team, bringing data and technology together and working closely to deliver innovative solutions in collaboration with our customer and digital teams.

The team built the applications that provide performance and usage data for the different batteries that make up AGL’s VPP. In the back end, we’re able to pull this information regularly and pass it through to our digital teams to improve the customer experience.

We now have 127 trillion points of data, giving our customers real time information about how their solar and battery system is performing. We’ve been able to do this through AGL’s investments in cloud technology over the past few years.

It’s exciting to be part of the team that’s working behind the scenes to support our VPP – and to experience this as a customer too – knowing what the team has been working on, seeing the great outcomes and sharing my own experiences and feedback to ensure we keep delivering for our customers.