Collaboration within Australia’s energy industry was alive and well at a sold-out first-of-its-kind technical event designed to support national cooperation and integration efforts in the digitised energy landscape.
Hosted by the ANU Centre for Energy Systems (ACES), CSIP-AUS Connect 2025 was an in-person only event, that brought together key stakeholders from government, industry, and academia working at the cutting edge of distributed energy resources (DER) management. CSIP-AUS or Common Smart Inverter Profile – Australia, is a pivotal standard for managing DER designed to facilitate robust and secure communication between DERs and electricity networks.
The week-long event ran from 29 September to 2 October and comprised of a three day launch of an ANU testing and certification service to support product manufacturers with technical compliance issues. This was followed by a two-day conference that considered interoperability issues more broadly.
CSIP-AUS Connect 2025 was the brainchild of Laura Jones, Lead Analyst at ACES.
“We were looking for a way to assist industry with practical implementation issues and we came up with the idea to launch a testing and certification service for CSIP-AUS. This is a nationally-harmonised service that replaces the previous fragmented landscape for testing and certification of CSIP-AUS devices, said Laura Jones. “Backed by a set of 'test harnesses' for servers and clients, this will improve the interoperability of CSIP-AUS capable devices in Australia.”
Opening the conference on Thursday 1 October, Eloise Taylor, Investment Manager, ARENA, set a challenge to all in the room: "Any customer, any device, any retailer, any network.
“It’s the idea that the future of DER is that it just works. Customers can choose any combination of devices, brands, retailer and can live anywhere in Australia and their setup should work for them. Failure to step up and meet this challenge means the full potential of consumer flexibility and DER will remain unrealised.”
More than 35 speakers provided unique perspectives from across Australia’s energy ecosystem. Through a series of presentations, panel discussions and workshops participants shared knowledge on the history of CSIP-AUS to-date, implementing CSIP-AUS - industry case studies, customer perspectives, national harmonisation, governance and regulation issues and behind-the-meter interoperability.
The event welcomed 150 participants on campus from electricity networks, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), OEM installers, energy regulators, government agencies, industry peak bodies, energy researchers, energy aggregators and Home Energy Management System providers. The event also attracted international attention with business representatives from the United States, Austria and China attending the conference.
Commenting after the event, Eloise Taylor remarked; “The event was a raging success (well done ANU) and I was enthused to see the room rise to the challenge to think about the pathway to an interoperable future for DER that goes well beyond CSIP.”
“With the success of the first conference, we certainly hope to have another event next year,” said Laura Jones. “Watch this space!”
Thanks to generous support from ARENA for making this event possible.
For more about the event, including speaker presentations:
CSIP-AUS Connect 2025: Building Australia's interoperable energy future | Centre for Energy Systems
For more about the CSIP-AUS certification process: