At AWS re:Invent, Amazon Web Services, Inc., an Amazon.com, Inc. company and Vector Technology Solutions Limited (VTS), a subsidiary of Vector Limited (NZX: VCT) has announced that more than 1 million smart energy meters in Australia and New Zealand are now running on Diverge, a data and analytics energy platform developed by the two companies as part of a strategic alliance formed in 2020. Powered by AWS’s data analytics and compute infrastructure, Diverge was created to help energy companies manage the transition to cleaner energy as the industry adopts renewable energy sources like solar and wind, and transforms with the rapid electrification of transport and heating systems.
Diverge processes high-frequency data from smart electricity and gas meters installed in homes and businesses, so energy companies can better understand energy supply and demand from across the grid, and the impact of distributed energy resources, like solar, batteries, or electric vehicle (EV) chargers. While meter data has traditionally only been used for billing, grid operators can use data insights from Diverge to plan, build, and manage their networks; approve distributed energy resource connections quicker; provide network capacity and more reliable power quality where and when it’s needed; and optimize investment decisions to improve customer outcomes more effectively.
Diverge provides secure access to this data in a format and frequency that supports multiple and simultaneous use cases across customer service, grid operations, and planning applications. For example, grid operators often lack visibility of the power quality at individual houses or streets. By providing faster and more reliable data analysis and alerts, Diverge can also improve outage detection and restoration capabilities.
Diverge leverages deep energy expertise from VTS combined with the breadth and depth of AWS services such as data analytics and highly scalable and secure infrastructure. The platform is cloud-native, completely serverless, and automatically scales to accommodate more smart meters while ensuring data is provided to energy companies at speed. Data hosted on the Diverge platform is fully encrypted, benefiting from the security of AWS’s world-class cloud infrastructure.
Vector Metering operates the more than 1 million smart meters that are now live on Diverge.
“By using Diverge, we’re providing and developing innovative services for our customers that deliver and respond to their needs, including the growing demand for renewable energy,” said Neil Williams, CEO at Vector Metering. “With Diverge, we can deliver five-minute settlement data to our Australian customers, hours earlier and more reliably. It also gives us the ability to support other data services, such as power quality data, without impacting billing and settlement data. We’re expanding this system in New Zealand, where it already supports our advanced gas metering and network data services, so customers there can also benefit from valuable insights.”
VTS and AWS have extended their strategic alliance until 2025 and will be focused on developing deeper insights for customers, expanding use cases for Diverge, and growing globally.
“We’re thrilled to see our next-generation cloud-based platform come to life and help transform the energy industry by using data to enable smarter, more customer-centric decisions,” said Shailesh Manga, chief operating officer at VTS. “Diverge enables vast amounts of energy data to be quickly and securely processed and analysed. This helps customers manage renewable energy deployment, dynamically manage complex networks, and respond to increasing demand for renewable electricity to meet carbon reduction goals. We’re excited to see the growing adoption of Diverge and look forward to launching Diverge in other countries around the world.”
“As the transition to cleaner energy and electrification accelerates, energy providers require bold and innovative solutions to manage the complexity that comes with intermittent and distributed energy resources,” said Sarah Cooper, general manager of Industry Products at AWS. “Leveraging AWS’s culture of innovation and working backwards mechanism, we’ve developed a secure and scalable energy data platform that grid operators and energy companies can use to improve how they operate. We are excited about the tangible strides we’ve made towards accelerating the world’s energy transition and look forward to helping VTS expand Diverge globally.”
AWS has a long-term commitment to customers, local communities, and sustainability in Aotearoa New Zealand, investing in a NZ $7.5 billion to open an AWS Asia Pacific (Auckland) Region, which is estimated to create 1,000 new jobs and contribute $10.8 billion to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) over the next 15 years. In 2023, AWS signed an agreement with Mercury NZ for renewable energy to power the Auckland Region. Transitioning to renewable energy is one of the most impactful ways to lower carbon emissions, and in 2022, 90% of the electricity consumed by Amazon was attributable to renewable energy sources. As the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the world, Amazon has announced more than 400 renewable energy projects worldwide and is on track to powering its operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025. Amazon’s renewable energy projects will supply energy for Amazon’s corporate offices, Amazon fulfilment centres, and AWS data centres that support millions of customers globally.
About Amazon Web Services
Since 2006, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any workload, and it now has more than 240 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 102 Availability Zones within 32 geographic regions, with announced plans for 15 more Availability Zones and five more AWS Regions in Canada, Germany, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Thailand. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.
About VTS
Vector Technology Solutions Ltd (VTS) is a subsidiary of Vector Ltd, a New Zealand energy portfolio business. Drawing on decades of energy industry and critical infrastructure experience, we build innovative technologies to help accelerate decarbonisation. We began creating real-world optimization solutions for Vector to enable a new energy future, working together with global tier-one solutions experts. We’ve since turned these into market-ready solutions from which the wider energy infrastructure sector can benefit. Visit vts.energy.
