Mitch O’Neill

Contact: email, linkedin, twitter

Mitch O’Neill is a Principal Consultant at Grids. He has 8 years of experience in the energy industry with a focus on distributed energy resources (DER) and demand side management (DSM). During this time, he has worked for governments, large companies, and start-ups in the areas of software and product development, strategy, and policy. This broad understanding of the DER landscape allows Mitch to effectively collaborate and translate ideas to a wide range of stakeholders, and to spot opportunities and gaps from a cross disciplinary approach.

He was an early employee in Reposit Power, a battery management company which develops hardware and software to enable small scale batteries to operate in energy markets and government schemes. Initially he developed the core software for operating these systems such as solar and load predictions, dispatch engines, and platforms for customers, installers, and networks. He then worked in strategy, regulation, and new markets as the Head of Strategy. During this time Reposit Power was the first company to directly participate (not under trial conditions) with residential batteries in the Reserve Emergency Reliability Trader (RERT) and Frequency Control Ancillary Services (FCAS) in the National Electricity Market (NEM). Reposit Power was also involved in early government schemes and network trials such as ACT’s Next Gen Energy Storage Program and Essential Energy’s Networks Renewed trial.

Since leaving Reposit in 2020 Mitch has held various roles working in industry to broaden his experience in different aspects of the electricity system. In mid-2020 Mitch joined the Energy Security Board as an industry consultant to bring on the ground experience to their DER workstream. During that time he worked with market bodies, governments, and stakeholders to develop advice for ministers on the integration of DER into electricity markets and the ESB’s DER implementation plan which is a three-year roadmap of reforms to better support DER uptake.

He also spent time at Ausgrid helping setup Project Edith, a trial demonstrating how network capacity can be better managed by sending real-time network tariffs and dynamic operating envelopes to DER. This time at Ausgrid allowed Mitch to better understand economic, technical, and regulatory drivers for networks during the energy transition, as well as opportunities for them to use their infrastructure more effectively, reducing costs for customers.

Mitch has a passion for consumer research and product development. He played a key role in the UPowr’s ARENA funded project “DER 2.0: Customer Focused Design for DER Participation”, in which through social science research developed three retail DER offerings which appealed to specific stakeholder groups. Mitch also aids Yarra Energy Foundation (YEF) and other community groups in developing community battery projects.

In recent assignments he conducted:

Feel free to reach out to Mitch on email, linkedin or twitter