Revolve accelerates New Zealand’s community and utility-scale energy transition with Gridcog

“We want the energy revolution to deliver lower costs, lower carbon emissions, and meaningful benefits for communities.”

Explore how Revolve is helping communities, developers, and commercial clients make confident, data driven decisions in an evolving energy market using Gridcog’s energy project modelling software.

Revolve is an Auckland based energy engineering consultancy providing support across strategy, feasibility, design, procurement, commissioning, and long term asset management. Shay Brazier, Founder and Technical Director says, “We support clients through every step, from the first idea through to ongoing operations, with decisions based on sound engineering and strong financial modelling.” 

The team focuses on three core areas: community energy, commercial and industrial projects, and utility scale solar and storage.

Shay Brazier, Founder and Technical Director at Revolve, has spent nearly two decades designing and delivering renewable energy systems across New Zealand, the Pacific, and Europe. Alongside the team, including Community Energy Lead Josh Yeats and Renewables Engineer Matthew Grant, the team is pioneering new energy models across community, C&I, and utility scale projects. 

Shay explains that “we help clients understand the business models, design the right technical solutions, and make sure the systems built will operate well for their entire life,” highlighting Revolve’s holistic approach from strategy through to ongoing asset management.

Driving Innovation in Community, C&I, and Utility Scale Energy

As New Zealand’s distributed energy landscape evolves rapidly, driven by electrification, price volatility, and new technologies, Revolve is increasingly helping clients explore models that involve shared assets, private networks, dynamic tariffs, and multiple parties. Shay notes that “the complexity is increasing, and clients need to see exactly how energy moves, how value is created, and how risks are shared,” which is what led the team to adopt Gridcog.

The Challenge: Modelling Complex, Multi Stakeholder Energy Systems

New Zealand’s market presents significant opportunities for distributed batteries and flexible demand, but the economics often depend on specific details such as peak management, connection upgrades, and unusual tariff structures. Matthew recalls, “The work became so complex that manual models were a real arm wrestle. We needed a flexible tool that could handle multiple parties, unusual tariffs, diverse time series inputs, and creative project structures without creating more manual overhead.”

“We looked for a modelling tool that could keep up with the way we think about projects, and Gridcog was the only thing that gave us the flexibility we needed.”

How Gridcog Transformed Revolve’s Modelling

Gridcog now forms the backbone of Revolve’s energy flow and commercial modelling. Matthew explains that it lets the team “play with how both energy and money move through a project, without getting bogged down in code or parallel spreadsheets.” This capability has made it far easier to test sensitivities, explore alternative structures, and refine technical designs.

Multi-asset, multi-scenario, multi-participant modelling

For community energy projects, Josh highlights that Gridcog is “super intuitive. It allows us to compare scenarios from the perspective of multiple parties, like comparing a small grid connection with a battery and PV against a large grid connection with high capital costs and low battery capacity. Unlike other tools, Gridcog lets us define scenarios and assign elements independently, then compare metrics for the developer, lines company, resident, and PPA provider.” This modular scenario building gives clients confidence in the decisions they make and ensures the financial implications for all stakeholders are transparent.

Tariffs and flexibility

Tariff modelling has also been a major benefit. Matthew notes that New Zealand’s electricity market can be unusual, but “the flexibility in Gridcog usually allows us to integrate unique tariffs.” Josh specifically calls out the support from Gridcog’s industry team, saying, “Catalina has been absolutely incredible. She has been able to quickly integrate complicated demand rules and sub tariffs into the UI. One example was just a couple of hours before our meeting, and she could pattern match it to a complex tariff from overseas, and she has since built it into Gridcog’s Library in a flash”

Long-term modelling

Shay emphasises the importance of time series flexibility:

“Gridcog was unique among the packages we found because it could handle flexible time series data changing over each year of a 25 year period. This is critical when you are trying to model evolving renewable output, demand, and market conditions over decades.”

The result is a modelling workflow that is both faster and more robust. Shay estimates that three to four people at Revolve use Gridcog regularly: “It allows us to dive back into projects easily, pick up where another team member left off, and see the evolution of the model through the various scenarios we have tried.”

Project Highlight: Mangawhai Hills Regenerative Development

One of Revolve’s flagship projects is the Mangawhai Hills development, a regenerative residential community north of Auckland designed to “give more than it takes” in energy, water, stormwater, wastewater management, and carbon. The development will include roughly 700 homes connected via a private network with a single connection to Northpower. Each home features:

• Around 10 kilowatts of solar
• A hybrid inverter
• A battery

Giving the community approximately 7 megawatts of PV and generating roughly 105 percent of its annual consumption.

The battery fleet is being designed for backup, arbitrage, and peak shaving. Shay explains that by “stacking the value from the batteries, we were able to reduce the required grid connection size, which lowered upfront capital costs and network operating costs.”

“Gridcog lets us put sophisticated models in front of boards early, showing cash flows, tariffs, and different scenarios. This gives clients hard numbers to compare options and make confident decisions.” 

Josh highlights the broader community benefits, saying, “We came recommended to a client who had a clear and compelling vision for a highly complex system. Our role was connecting the disciplines, modelling the scenarios, and working through the complexity from first principles to find a buildable path forward.” 

“The Mangawhai Hills project is a great example of what’s possible when a client’s ambition is matched with the right consulting support - and Gridcog’s platform helped us model and communicate the options.”

Looking Ahead: Microgrids, Batteries, and a More Dynamic NZ Energy System

Revolve is exploring commercial and industrial microgrids as the next evolution of community energy at scale. Shay says the team is also focused on capturing the growing value of battery edge cases as price volatility increases. 

The goal is to “stack the value of batteries and distributed energy systems across multiple stakeholders rather than just one party, and to find the sweet spots for communities from both regulatory and financial perspectives.” 

Matthew adds that Gridcog helps them remove guesswork and give clients confidence to make decisions in an uncertain energy market.

Reflections on Success

Shay sums up Revolve’s mission: “We want the energy revolution to deliver lower costs, lower carbon emissions, and meaningful benefits for communities. Achieving that requires distilling complex issues into simple, understandable facts for clients. Modelling is a powerful tool used in this process.” 

Josh emphasises that Revolve’s core skill is helping clients realise ambitious ideas: “We use our expertise to connect the dots and find paths where others have hit walls, so that boundary-pushing projects like like Mangawhai Hills, can succeed.”

If you’re a consultancy and interested in modelling energy projects faster, reach out to our team of industry experts today.

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Revolve Energy: https://www.revolveenergy.co/ 

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