Regen Power Pty Ltd and Curtin University have been awarded an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project grant valued at close to $1.93 million to develop an AI-driven platform supporting Australian households across the full battery lifecycle – sizing, smart charging, and end-of-life recycling. The project runs from 2026 to 2029 and represents one of the most substantial industry–research partnerships in Australia’s residential energy-storage sector.
A milestone for Western Australian solar research
On 19 May 2026, Curtin University’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Research formally confirmed that ARC Linkage Project LP250200960 – titled AI-Driven Sustainable Battery Adoption: Sizing, Profiling, and Recycling – had been awarded to a Curtin research team working in partnership with Regen Power.
The award is the outcome of a rigorous multi-stage peer review process. Only a small fraction of applications to the ARC Linkage Projects scheme are funded in any given round, and the Round 2 award places this project among a select group of Australian research collaborations recognised as combining scientific rigour with tangible industrial and public benefit.
For Regen Power, this is more than a research grant. It is formal validation of a consumer-centric approach to solar and battery storage that the company has spent more than two decades building – an approach grounded in real installation data, evidence-led decision-making, and long-term customer outcomes.
Project at a glance
| Project title | AI-Driven Sustainable Battery Adoption: Sizing, Profiling, and Recycling |
| ARC reference | LP250200960 (Linkage Projects, LP25 Round 2) |
| Administering organisation | Curtin University – Faculty of Business and Law |
| Industry partner | Regen Power Pty Ltd |
| Total project value | AUD $1,929,755 |
| ARC contribution | AUD $467,463 (cash) |
| Curtin University contribution | AUD $621,717 (cash and in-kind) |
| Regen Power contribution | AUD $840,575 (cash and in-kind) |
| Duration | Three years – 2026 to 2029 |
| Research capacity | Three PhD scholarships, one research assistant, four investigators |
| Deployment scope | Western Australian households, with national and international translation |
What is an ARC Linkage Project – and why does it matter?
The Australian Research Council Linkage Projects scheme is one of the country’s most competitive and prestigious mechanisms for funding applied research. Its purpose is to support collaborative research and development projects between higher education researchers and other parts of the innovation system – most importantly, industry.
Three features make the Linkage scheme distinctive:
- Peer-reviewed and highly competitive – Applications are assessed by expert academic peers and by end-user assessors from industry, government, and community sectors. Fewer than one in five applications is typically funded.
- Mandatory industry co-investment – Industry partners must contribute meaningful cash and in-kind resources – at least 25 percent of the ARC’s cash contribution as cash from the partner. This ensures the research is grounded in real-world need, not academic theory alone.
- Focused on translation – Linkage Projects must demonstrate a clear pathway from research findings to public, industrial, or economic benefit. It is a scheme designed to produce outputs that leave the laboratory and reach the market.
In practice, the ARC Linkage stamp signals that a research project has cleared a very high bar: the science is rigorous, the industry partner is credible and committed, and the intended outcomes are considered by independent reviewers to be nationally significant. For Regen Power, that stamp represents third-party validation from Australia’s peak research funder that the company’s data, expertise, and installation base offer real scientific value.
Why this project – and why now
Australia has 4 million rooftop solar systems. Fewer than 180,000 have a battery attached. Closing that gap is the defining challenge of the next decade.
Figure 1. Australia leads the world in rooftop solar penetration, but battery attachment remains below 5%. This gap is the problem the research programme is designed to solve.
Australia’s rooftop solar rollout is a genuine world-first achievement. More than one in three Australian households now generates its own electricity from the sun. Yet the same country that leads the world in solar penetration has a battery attachment rate of well below five percent.
The consequences of this gap are significant.
- Grid strain – Without residential storage, the middle-of-the-day solar surplus stresses distribution networks and drives negative wholesale prices, undermining the economics of new solar investment.
- Household exposure – Solar-only households remain exposed to peak evening tariffs and to the increasing frequency of grid outages driven by extreme weather.
- Missed decarbonisation opportunity – The pathway to net zero depends on residential storage scaling in parallel with solar generation. Without it, the electrification of transport and household heating is materially harder.
The federal Cheaper Home Batteries Program, which commenced in mid-2025, is designed to accelerate battery uptake through targeted rebates. But rebates alone do not solve the underlying decision-support problem. Households do not need cheaper batteries so much as they need clearer, more trustworthy answers to three questions:
- What size battery is right for my home, my consumption pattern, and my future?
- How do I operate it to maximise both my savings and the health of the grid?
- What happens to it in 10 to 15 years – and can I trust that pathway?
These three questions are the focus of the research programme now funded by the ARC.
What the project will build
The research is structured around three integrated stages, each delivered by a dedicated doctoral candidate and coordinated across a shared data infrastructure.
Figure 2. The three integrated workstreams – consumer profiling feeds the AI models, which feed industry translation.
Stage 1 – Consumer profiling and adoption analysis
The first stage develops an evidence base on how Australian households actually make battery decisions. This includes a survey of approximately 400 Western Australian households, in-depth interviews with around 40 participants, and integration with Regen Power’s installation dataset to build a robust consumer-segmentation model. The output is a set of behavioural and socio-economic profiles that feed directly into the technical modelling of Stage 2.
Stage 2 – Artificial intelligence platform
The second stage is the technical engine. Three interlinked models are built and validated:
- Sizing engine – Gradient-boosted machine-learning models (XGBoost, LightGBM, CatBoost) matched with random-forest validation, trained on real installation and consumption data to recommend battery capacity for a specific household’s circumstances – not a generic archetype.
- Smart-charging optimiser – Reinforcement-learning models (Deep Q-Network and Proximal Policy Optimisation approaches) that respond in real time to tariffs, weather forecasts, household demand and grid conditions, maximising economic value while easing grid stress.
- Remaining-useful-life and end-of-life module – Predictive models for battery degradation and a blockchain-based traceability layer for recycling, connecting to Australia’s B-cycle product-stewardship scheme.
Stage 3 – Business model and industry translation
The third stage translates the research into something that Australian solar SMEs can actually deploy. It includes structured workshops with industry partners in Perth and Melbourne, a business-model design process for the platform, and a plan for scaling the tools beyond Regen Power into the broader solar retailer and installer ecosystem. Field validation includes pilot commissioning of five solar-and-battery systems at Regen Power facilities across Years 2 and 3.
The investment behind the research
The project’s total value of AUD $1,929,755 reflects a genuine three-way partnership between the ARC, Curtin University, and Regen Power. The ARC’s cash contribution funds the doctoral scholarships and the research assistant; Curtin’s contribution covers academic supervision, facilities, and infrastructure; and Regen Power’s contribution covers installation expertise, customer data infrastructure, field engineering, and pilot deployment hardware.
Figure 3. Funding breakdown for the three-year programme. Every dollar of ARC funding is matched by roughly three dollars of industry and university co-investment.
| Contributor | Contribution (AUD) | Nature of contribution |
| Australian Research Council | $467,463 | Cash – competitive peer-reviewed grant |
| Curtin University | $621,717 | Cash and in-kind (staff, facilities, HDR support) |
| Regen Power Pty Ltd | $840,575 | Cash and in-kind (data, expertise, pilot infrastructure) |
| Total project value | $1,929,755 | Delivered over three years, 2026–2029 |
The leverage ratio is worth highlighting. The ARC contributes approximately 24 percent of the total project value. Every dollar of public research investment is matched by roughly three dollars of industry and university co-investment – a strong return on the taxpayer’s contribution and a demonstration of genuine partnership commitment.
The research team
The project is delivered by an interdisciplinary team drawn from Curtin University’s Faculty of Business and Law, working in close partnership with Regen Power’s Managing Director.
- Associate Professor Vidy Potdar (Lead Chief Investigator) – Curtin University — digital platforms and applied artificial intelligence. Associate Professor Potdar leads the technical workstream and platform architecture.
- Professor Subramaniam Ananthram (Chief Investigator) – Curtin University — research methodology, stakeholder analysis, and mixed-methods design. Professor Ananthram leads the consumer profiling and adoption research.
- Associate Professor Anton Klarin (Chief Investigator) – Curtin University — innovation management and business strategy. Associate Professor Klarin leads the SME translation and business-model workstream.
- Dr Nikhil Jayaraj (Partner Investigator) – Managing Director of Regen Power and Adjunct Researcher at Curtin University. Dr Jayaraj bridges the academic and industry workstreams, contributes two decades of solar and storage practice, and ensures the research is validated in real-world conditions.
Three PhD scholarships will be recruited across the three workstreams – one specialising in energy social science and consumer research, one in machine learning and energy systems, and one in innovation management and commercialisation. A cross-cutting research assistant supports fieldwork, data governance, and project coordination.
Why Regen Power was chosen as the industry partner
Curtin University considered several potential partners during the project design phase. Regen Power was selected on three grounds.
- Depth of installed base – Since its founding in 2002, Regen Power has completed more than 45,000 solar and battery installations across Western Australia. That dataset offers the scale and diversity required to train and validate machine-learning models that generalise well.
- A track record in consumer-centric research. Regen Power’s leadership has previously contributed to peer-reviewed research on residential solar storage and grid-resilient community batteries, published in journals including Energy Policy and Renewable Energy. This is a company that treats R&D as a first-class business function.
- Field engineering capacity – Regen Power’s in-house licensed electricians, installation teams, and rooftop testing infrastructure allow research findings to be validated in real Western Australian homes – not laboratory simulations. That capacity is essential for a project that promises pilot deployments and market-ready outputs.
Expected impact
The project targets impact across four dimensions.
For households
Sharper, evidence-based recommendations on battery sizing tuned to actual consumption. Better operating performance from installed systems through smart-charging models. A credible, traceable end-of-life pathway that supports genuine circular-economy outcomes rather than landfill.
For the solar industry
A shared research foundation that Australian solar SMEs can draw on to raise the quality of their customer recommendations. Structured knowledge transfer workshops in Perth and Melbourne to translate the research outputs into industry practice.
For the energy transition
A rigorous, independent evidence base to inform state and federal energy policy – including the design of future rebate programs, distribution-network planning, and product-stewardship regulation.
For research and training
Three doctoral graduates trained at the intersection of clean energy, machine learning, and consumer research. A minimum of six Q1 peer-reviewed publications targeted across the project. An open, defensible research framework that can be exported to national and international markets, including translation to the private-rental sector and to international deployments such as the Gulf region.
What happens next
Project mobilisation is now underway. Immediate priorities over the next 60 days include:
- Formal signing of the ARC Funding Agreement and the Curtin–Regen Power Collaboration Agreement.
- Recruitment of the three PhD candidates and the research assistant, with structured industry placements at Regen Power’s Canning Vale facility.
- Establishment of the Joint Steering Committee that will govern the project over its three-year life.
- Ethics application for the household survey and interview components of Stage 1.
- Data access arrangements with Synergy for smart-meter data integration.
The first research outputs – focused on consumer profiling and initial sizing models – are expected in late 2026 to early 2027, with field pilots commencing during 2027 and platform integration and industry workshops running through 2028 and 2029.
Figure 4. Project timeline from kick-off through to completion in 2029, with the three stages running in overlapping cadence.
A final word
Winning an ARC Linkage grant is a signal moment for any organisation. For Regen Power, it validates something we have believed for over two decades: that the energy transition is won one household at a time, one decision at a time, one honest recommendation at a time.
The Australian solar industry has done extraordinary work getting 4 million systems onto Australian roofs. The next chapter – storage – is harder. It requires better data, better decision-support tools, and a stronger scientific foundation. This project is designed to provide exactly that.
We are grateful to the Australian Research Council for the funding, to Curtin University for the partnership, and to every Regen Power customer whose installation journey has, over 22 years, produced the dataset that now underpins nationally significant research.
We will share progress updates as the research milestones are met.
About the author
Dr Nikhil Jayaraj is the Managing Director of Regen Power Pty Ltd and an Adjunct Researcher at Curtin University. He holds a Doctor of Business Administration and has published extensively on residential solar and battery storage in Q1 international journals.
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