Community Batteries – Information & Updates

Community Batteries are a low fuss, efficient way to store surplus energy produced by solar and feed this energy back into the grid when demand is high.

Community Batteries are just over the horizon. Victorian trials are underway and the Victorian Government has a new Neighbourhood Battery funding program. You can read more about Yarra Energy Foundation and Citipower/United Energy’s Solar Sponge program here.

Customers will be able to forgo the initial $5-10,000 investment and associated installation required for behind-the-meter storage, in favour of medium scale community batteries, offering a more efficient use of battery technology where power is shared at a local community level. Community batteries will allow more customers to feed into the grid, and also support the grid. They soak up any excess solar power and smooth the flow, improving power reliability and quality to customers.

If you are interested in keeping in touch and receiving quarterly updates please register your interest in the form below.

It is important to realise that community batteries should provide services to the community. They will allow more customers a greater opportunity to export more solar more often, help to manage network demand peaks, manage local voltage network issues and allow sharing of neighbourhood energy.

Community batteries can trade and provide grid services in a number of ways. Although at present achieving economic viability is a challenge, this will improve with increased solar penetration  and the general movement of the grid away from a centralised to a more distributed model. Community batteries will help households maximise their roofs, support increased numbers of solar households and electric vehicle charging in local streets. Importantly, a community battery has no individual upfront costs and maintenance is not the responsibility of the household.

Setting up a community battery makes sense with in areas where there are clusters of solar households or more technically where there are network constraints.

A community battery should be something that the whole neighbourhood is proud of and should provide benefits to the community as a whole.