<
https://reneweconomy.com.au/tiny-town-in-victoria-hits-go-on-edgy-community-energy-concept/>
"It’s only taken 16 years but Newstead, a tiny town in the bougie triangle of
central Victoria’s spa district, finally has its community solar and battery.
“We were only teenagers when we started and now we’re old people,” says
Newstead Renewables convenor and birdwatcher, Geoff Park.
“Back in 2008 we had a community summit where people in our community were keen
to do something in the renewable energy space. At the time they didn’t know
what that was or what it looked like, but it sparked a discussion that it would
be really good to do something.”
Today, that vision comes to life in the form of a 3 megawatt (MW) solar farm
and 5 megawatt hour (MWh) battery, which is one of the new DC-coupled
installations which means the battery and solar farm are one unit rather than
two separate entities.
Each local household that signs up will be allocated a certain amount of power
from the $8 million project, which is owned and operated by Flow Power, at a
price around 30c/kWh.
Flow Power owns another DC-coupled solar-battery project, the Berri farm in
South Australia which has a 5.8 MW solar farm coupled with a 6.7 MWh battery,
all switched on last year.
Park says that while Newstead residents might be able to find cheaper power
offers, the 30c/kWh deal is likely to be the cheapest for truly green power
available to that location on the market today.
Flow Power wants to use the Newstead project as a demonstration that it can
roll out for other communities in Australia, says CEO Matthew van der Linden.
Both Park and van der Linden point to the Newstead solar battery as an example
of how to build the kind of renewable energy projects Australia needs –
medium-scale that can lean on distribution networks rather than requiring the
build out of new transmission lines, and which don’t upset the neighbours.
“We need some pretty significant shifts and in my view this method, where the
community is often seen in the market as a barrier, this is a great example of
where it’s not and the community is the instigator,” van der Linden says.
Park says the goal from the start was to give locals access to locally
generated, affordable green energy without rupturing the community in the
process – as is happening a short drive away to the east in Colbinabbin where
some residents are vehemently opposing Venn Energy’s 350 MW solar farm."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
