Neighbourhood Battery Initiative - MR BIG

The Macedon Ranges Sustainability Group (MRSG) was successful in securing a $54k grant in the Victorian Government’s Neighbourhood Battery Initiative in September 2021.

This grant will be used to fund a feasibility study and community engagement program with the objective of developing a business case and implementation project for a community battery in the Macedon Ranges. This one year program involves community organisations, local councils and industry conducting pilots, gauging community interest and demonstrating a range of neighbourhood battery ownership and operational models in order to harness the potential of neighbourhood-scale energy storage in Victoria’s transition to clean energy.

Neighbourhood-scale batteries are being trialled and implemented in communities across the country with the potential to increase the reliability and resilience of the local electricity grid as well as increasing the grid’s capacity for renewable energy. For example, these batteries can store excess electricity produced by residential solar systems during the day and dispatch that power at night when solar power systems are not generating; they can provide brown-out protection in areas which are prone to power cuts; and they can function as a critical component in a microgrid which can lead to much cheaper clean renewable energy for consumers. Additionally, putting these larger neighbourhood batteries at key locations on the local network allows the community to benefit from the economies of scale and can provide a virtual battery for local residents without them having to invest in what can be expensive residential batteries.

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Neighbourhood Battery Benefits

Neighbourhood batteries can deliver a variety of benefits to the community depending on where and how they are configured and operated as well as who owns them, including:

• Reducing network congestion caused by a high level of Solar PV installed in neighbourhoods. This excess energy that is exported during the day, when the sun is out, can be absorbed and stored for use later in the evening when it is needed most.  Having a community battery in a neighbourhood can potentially reduce the need for export limiting allowing more households to gain benefits from their solar installations.

• Reducing energy inequality by allowing more households to make use of locally-generated renewable energy even though they may not have solar PV systems or batteries of their own, whether that be due to shaded locations, rental properties or lack of roof space.

• Increasing the affordability of renewable energy by reducing the losses, costs and charges associated with transmitting electricity across long distances from generators with solar farms or coal fired power stations. This can help keep downward pressure on energy prices and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

• Batteries are not yet affordable for a majority of individual households. Deploying community batteries as a shared resource across a neighbourhood can provide a more cost-effective means of giving all those households access to battery storage.

• Increasing resilience in the presence of bush-fire or extreme weather events. It is possible to incorporate batteries into microgrids to provide resilience to the electricity supply when adverse events such as the storms we have seen over the past few months. However, this will often only be possible for microgrids and isolated areas with commensurate increases in complexity and especially cost.

The benefits that a neighbourhood battery can deliver will depend on a large number of different and sometimes competing factors. The project will be looking at finding the best combination of uses and configurations including its location, identifying how it will be used and what is the best ownership model for any potential battery installations. This will take into account how the community wants to make use of these batteries.

Read more at What are Neighbourhood Batteries?

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