One in every six Australian households has solar energy online. However, only one in sixty has battery storage, which means a deal of potential grid support is being lost. This seems like a no-brainer, except Australian community batteries face the same challenge as grid-scale ones. And that’s where to locate the central battery, without upsetting vested interests.
Locating a Community Battery in Melbourne, Australia
The Southern Australia grid went through a bad patch a couple of years ago, and residents still face occasional outages. Community batteries could help Australia in two ways. First, they could help support the grid during high-demand periods. And secondly, they could bring relief to consumers during outage periods.
Renew Economy in Australia has been monitoring the spread of community batteries across the country. On May 24 2023, they reported how the Yarra Energy Foundation won an AU500,000 grant from federal government. The authority is currently awarding this support under its Community Batteries for Household Solar program.
More About the Yarra Energy Foundation Proposal
The Foundation wants to locate the 120kW/360kWh group battery somewhere in the densely populated Melbourne suburb of Richmond. Foundation chief operating officer Timothy Shue told Renew Economy, “We’ve done some early mapping of the low voltage network, where we think the battery could go.
“But the actual location selection is subject to, probably, a lengthy and involved process with the council and the local community.” He went on to explain there was a high chance they would need to locate the community battery on council land. People may be seriously excited about the concept, but there are vested interests at play.
Let’s hope Shue is correct, and that the power of Australian community batteries will bring people together, so they can participate in our energy future. But this may require some folk to accept that distributed batteries bring over-riding community benefits.
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