Energy Innovation: The Rise of Decentralisation and the Opportunity for Israel
- Hatikvah Australia
- Jun 26
- 3 min read
Most of us have heard about the risks of climate change, and many have heard of the energy transition. Australia has clear targets to reduce carbon emissions. We know Israel as the “Start-Up Nation.” So, a question is: how can Israel and Australia create partnerships to accelerate the journey to a low-emissions world?
The potential is actually quite high, and it's linked to the nature of the transition with the need for innovation. At the base of the transition there is an overwhelming trend away from large centralised high-emission electricity generation systems (mainly coal generation) to smaller low-emission systems (solar systems). The term used in the energy sector is Decentralised Energy Resources or DER for short. Australia leads the world in terms of residential systems per capita with over 4 million households now producing electricity from the sun.
When you look at this through an innovation lens, the pattern is a shift away from systems that rely heavily on experienced engineering professionals to keep generation well maintained, towards smaller but highly digitalised DER systems. These DER systems do not require a person on site, and their overall impact depends on deploying them at scale. The forecast is that by 2050 almost 50% of total electricity generation will come from DER systems (according to the electricity market operator).
This is where the story becomes very interesting for Israel and its ability to innovate. Software is now a critical part of the technology needed to fuel the transition. The electrification journey, where a house will have a solar system, battery, EV charger and smart devices, will rely on smarts to manage everything and produce the best value for customers and the energy network. For example, the best return on solar generation is to use it in the house and not export. Smart devices and smart management can make that much easier, in particular when looking at EV charging.
Looking back, we can already point to two Israeli companies operating in distributed energy resources, even if most people don't realise they are Israeli. The first is Chromagen, with its solar hot-water systems; a later entrant is SolarEdge, which delivered a unique solution for solar systems.
Looking forward, in this kind of environment start-ups will play an important role by identifying opportunities for new solutions and deploying them quickly at scale. This provides Israel with a great opportunity to make an impact even before we mention the cybersecurity aspects of DER systems. Israeli companies are already pushing the limits with one example being Electreon, a company that has developed wireless charging for electric vehicles. It may sound like science fiction, but they already have working prototypes and projects around the world.
The question is then how can we promote more partnerships between Israel and Australia as part of this opportunity?
As a step that will help answer this question and contribute to building the foundations for potential partnerships, TradeIL (the Israel Trade and Economic Commission in Sydney) is organising an event in partnership with the law firm Bird & Bird next week (Wednesday the 1st of July). The event is free and will start at 6:00 pm in the Sydney CBD.
If you are interested to attend please reach out by email to Lachlan.corne@israeltrade.gov.il and you can find more details this link.
