• Hanwha Group and Octopus Energy plan to launch a 100% renewable electricity retailer in Australia, according to a report by RenewEconomy
  • To be operational in October 2019, the ‘next generation’ retailing platform will use Kraken technology of Octopus Energy
  • The platform will make use of technology targeting markets that are transitioning away from fossil fuels, decentralizing energy supply and bringing down consumer costs with dynamic pricing, electric vehicles and battery storage

South Korean solar cell power company Hanwha Group is joining hands with technology company Octopus Energy of the United Kingdom to launch a 100% renewable electricity retailer in Australia. The ‘next generation’ retail energy platform will be revealed in October 2019, reported RenewEconomy news portal.

Both the companies plan to target markets that are transitioning away from fossil fuels, decentralizing energy supply and bringing down consumer costs with dynamic pricing, electric vehicles and battery storage through this platform.

Referring to a statement released by the 2 companies, RenewEconomy said for this project Octopus Energy’s Kraken technology will be used that’s ‘designed to accelerate the move to green energy and smarter grids’. “With volatile prices, and increased demand through decarbonisation, energy companies will need deep technology at the core, and Kraken is designed to deliver this,” quoted RenewEconomy from the official statement.

While the report doesn’t specify which technologies will be part of this retail platform or any other details, solar should be one of it since it is one of the most popular sources of renewable energy in Australia currently. At the same time, Octopus Energy is backed by Octopus Investments of the UK, that’s a non-utility investor in onshore renewables and describes itself as the ‘largest commercial solar player in Europe’ with over 2 GW of clean energy assets.

In September 2018, the Queensland government in Australia launched a new power generation company called CleanCo with focus on low and no emission power generation assets, starting with 1 GW of new solar, wind and hydro power plants (see Queensland Launches New RE Focused Utility).

In Australia, currently Hanwha’s business division under the name of Hanwha Q Cells is embroiled in a legal battle against REC Group, JinkoSolar and LONGi Solar having accused them of patent infringement related to the Korean company’s passivation technology. It has also indicted REC Group’s local module distributors BayWa r.e. and Sol Distribution for marketing and selling REC’s products in Australia (see Hanwha’s Patent Lawsuit Expands Scope).