In recent years, there's been a huge push for consumers to be more aware of the impact traditional power stations have on the environment, and many Australian households have turned to alternate forms of energy to lower their power bill and leave a smaller carbon footprint. Knowing this, three Canberra entrepreneurs have started up a way for households to be more economical about where their energy is going.
Luke Osborne, Lachlan Blackhall and Dean Spaccavento are the founders of Reposit, a piece of software that can store and track solar energy, as well as provide the latest market and weather data to get consumers a cheaper energy bill.
“It uses information about the weather, the grid and current electricity prices and it uses all of that information to make an intelligent decision about what your battery should do continuously throughout the day,” says Lachlan.
Dean Spaccavento and Lachlan Blackhall are two of the founders for Reposit. Source: Supplied
“It knows what your best interests are. It says get the bill down, it knows that's the thing that you want and so it does everything it possibly can several times a second to be able to do that.”
The trio left their respective jobs in electricity and data analysis to start up Reposit in 2011, a time when energy storage was beyond comprehension for many in the tech sector.
“When we first had the idea, it was considered crazy to even talk about residential energy storage because why would customers ever want to have a battery in their house? We get to 2016 and not only is it not crazy, it's going to become very commonplace.”
Users can track where their solar power is going around the household, and where they can save on their bills. Source: Supplied
Founding the company in 2013, it’s seen monumental growth from a tiny office in Canberra to 16 employees and hundreds of customers across Australia. It’s also become a bigger industry than the founders have anticipated.
“The complexity of the industry is such that it takes you 24 to 36 months to understand who the players are, what the actual motivations in the industry are, what the technology looks like, who the regulators are, what they want from you, the path to regulation,” says Dean.
One differentiator of Reposit is that not only can customers save energy in their battery, but they can also sell it back to the grid. The founders hope that in time, companies can go to residents for clean energy, rather than power stations.
This Reposit contraption can be installed by an electrician. Source: Supplied
About 15% of Australian homes use solar panels – one of the highest rates in the world. As this is set to increase to 50% over the next 10 years, Reposit’a dream for clean energy may become a reality after all.
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