Ausgrid Opens Network Data Map to Guide C&I Solar Siting in Trial Zones

Ausgrid has published a spatial energy planning tool that reveals, street by street, where Sydney's electricity network can absorb more solar and batteries — and where it can't. The Sydney-headquartered distributor released the digital map to back its Community Power Network (CPN) trial, which is testing whether large commercial and industrial rooftops can generate surplus solar for consumers who can't install panels themselves.

What does the tool actually show?

Three layers of network intelligence, according to Ausgrid:

• Where the grid has spare capacity to connect additional solar and battery systems
• Where network limitations could constrain new installations
• Where future energy projects are likely to be technically and commercially suitable

The tool draws on detailed connection and curtailment data — the kind of information distributors have historically kept close to the chest. Making it public means developers, energy retailers and businesses can screen sites before committing to engineering studies, rather than discovering a constraint after the fact.

Coverage spans the three regions tied to the CPN trial: Mascot-Botany, the Northern Central Coast, and Caringbah in Sydney's south.

Why is a distributor doing this?

The CPN's premise is straightforward. Commercial and industrial rooftops — warehouses, factories, retail boxes — have the square footage and daytime load profiles that make large solar arrays economic. Renters and apartment dwellers don't. The trial pairs big C&I generation with community batteries, then shares the financial benefits across local households and businesses.

Ausgrid Group External Affairs and Strategy Executive Tim Jarratt framed the tool as the trial's information backbone. The CPN, he said, explores how large C&I rooftops can generate more solar energy, supported by community batteries, while passing financial benefits through to households and businesses across local communities.

"As part of the trial, we're making detailed information about the local electricity network publicly available to give businesses and energy providers a clearer picture of where new solar, battery and energy projects could work best," Jarratt said.

What's different about Caringbah?

Of the three regions, Caringbah is the open-ended one. Rather than Ausgrid steering a specific project design, the data release invites the market to bring its own proposals forward.

"In Caringbah, the data will help the market to explore and test its own ideas," Jarratt said. "It's a great opportunity to see what different approaches emerge and what we can learn from them."

For practitioners, that's the signal to watch. A distributor publishing curtailment and capacity data — and then standing back to see which business models developers propose — is a live test of whether network transparency alone can unlock distributed generation that the current connections queue leaves stranded.

What happens next?

The trial's value will show up in what gets built. If businesses and energy providers use the Mascot-Botany, Northern Central Coast and Caringbah datasets to bring forward solar-plus-storage projects that actually connect — and if community benefit-sharing structures hold up — the CPN becomes a template other distribution zones can copy. The milestone that decides it: whether the Caringbah open call produces bankable market-led proposals.