There’s good news for residents and businesses in Broome, Western Australia who have been prevented from going solar – new community batteries will allow for more PV installations in the town.
It’s been challenging to install systems in various locations in Horizon Power’s service area for some years as solar hosting capacity has been quite limited in order to protect fragile local grids.
It’s been an ongoing problem in Broome, with only around a hundred solar systems installed between June 2018 and April this year. A bit over 900kW of new solar hosting capacity was made available to Broome residential customers in July, but that was snapped up very quickly.
Broome residents using Horizon Power’s connection tool to see if they can install panels currently see this message:
Horizon Power has set of goal of all households in its service area being able to access to rooftop solar by 2025. Last month, it released more hosting capacity for Carnarvon, Exmouth and Denham. And it looks like Broome will be the next town to benefit.
Early this month, Horizon announced it will commission two community batteries in Broome early next year, which will be installed at Broome North Primary School and at the corner of Port Drive and Cable Beach Road East in January.
The batteries will soak up surplus energy being generated by existing solar installations in the town, smoothing the flow of electricity and releasing the stored energy when it’s needed. With the batteries in place, this will free up more than 1,400kW of hosting capacity, which will become available residents and businesses in February 2022.
“Solar Smoothing” Service For Bigger Systems
As well as creating more hosting capacity, the new batteries will also provide “Solar Smoothing Service” capability. Currently, customers with systems over 30kW capacity are required to install a smoothing battery to manage fluctuations in energy generated so it doesn’t impact network stability and threaten power supply to the town.
Once the community batteries are up and running, Horizon’s energy storage systems will be able to perform this service for a fixed daily fee (rate not mentioned).
“We are really proud of this new product, which is the result of dedicated collaboration with the Broome community,” stated Horizon Power’s Krystal Skinner. “It’s just another example of how Horizon Power is delivering on its commitment to create innovative solutions that meet the changing energy needs of our customers.”
The community battery project is part of Horizon Power’s $75 million Renew the Regions program.
Community batteries such as those to be installed in Broome aren’t just benefiting “fringe-of-grid” areas. They are increasingly being deployed in metropolitan areas across Australia where solar uptake has been so strong it’s starting to cause a few headaches. In some cases, new solar owners have been subject to zero export limits. Community batteries and other network tweakery can help avoid this.
Trivia: In Broome’s postcode area (population around 16,000), more than 498 small-scale systems had been installed with a collective capacity of 5,891 kW as at October 31, 2021.
Related: Solar panels in Broome – statistics, energy production and more.
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