Putting the community into community batteries

So what has been happening at Village Power?

Earlier this year we applied for two rounds of funding to procure a battery and implement our unique community engagement business model. In anticipation of receiving funding, we also established a Project Advisory Group. The Advisory Group includes representatives from Darebin and Banyule Councils, Jemena and experts in the energy sector and community engagement.

One round of funding was the Federal Government’s Community Batteries for Household Solar program. In this program, the Government set aside batteries for 58 named communities, one of which was Alphington. The designation of named communities for batteries were a part of the Labour party’s commitment to implement 400 community batteries.

Village Power applied for $500,000 for a 500kWh battery. It may sound like a lot of money but it was barely sufficient to purchase the battery. Additional funds would be required to cover the costs of installation, management of a complex project and the development of an IT system to enable members of the community to engage with the battery.

Unfortunately, Village Power was not awarded the funding as a competing application was made by Jemena, the energy distributor. Needless to say that we were disappointed.

However, Village Power also applied for funding under the Victorian Government’s Neighbourhood Battery Initiative (NBI). We applied for $750,000 to cover the costs for a battery and the associated infrastructure and delivery expertise.

Recently we were notified that the decisions on the NBI grants were delayed and are likely to be announced in late July. We remain optimistic of securing this funding.

We titled our application for the NBI funding: Putting the ‘community’ into community batteries. There is no real definition for a community battery. It raises an important question, when is community battery a ‘community’ battery? From a Village Power perspective, we believe that community engagement can be more than just selecting the artwork on a battery, our model involves active participation by the community and direct benefits flowing back to the community. As far as we know, no other model achieves this.

The need to continue expand the use of renewable energy to address climate change remain urgent. Community batteries will play a vital role in the local ‘community’ energy network to support local generation and consumption of carbon free energy.