Hume’s Hand Up For More Neighbourhood Batteries

Federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen will soon be getting another request from a community keen on a neighbourhood battery – Victoria’s City Of Hume.

In December 2021 and before his ascension to PM, Labor leader Anthony Albanese unveiled his party’s Powering Australia plan. An element of the plan is a $200 million investment over four years to deliver around 400 large batteries in communities prone to natural disasters, experiencing electricity quality and reliability issues or where rooftop solar power uptake is such that it’s causing some headaches in terms of local electricity network management.

Then Shadow and now Energy (and Climate Change) Minister Chris Bowen then got cracking on spruiking these batteries across the country, and did a bang-up job. Pledges flew thick and fast, almost to the point it appeared Mr. Bowen was teleporting between towns and communities.

Now the dust from the election has somewhat settled,  Labor’s thoughts will need to turn to delivering all these community batteries and figuring out where the balance Mr. Bowen hasn’t yet promised will end up.

Another community that is putting its hand up for a battery is the City of Hume, a local government area located in the northern fringe of metropolitan Melbourne. Home to almost 244,000 residents, among its suburbs are Broadmeadows, Craigieburn and Sunbury.

Solar Energy Popular In Hume

City of Hume is also home to lots of small-scale solar power systems – it’s estimated more than 22,800 have been installed to date. Hume City Council has installed its share of solar panels, with more than 2MW of capacity on various Council facilities.

There is already a neighbourhood battery in Greenvale, which is owned and operated by Distributed Network Service Provider (DNSP) Jemena. It was installed in May 2020 as part of a trial to alleviate pressure on the local grid resulting from high levels of locally-generated solar energy goodness flowing into it. 25% of the connections on this low voltage network were solar households at the time, and no doubt the proportion has grown since..

There are none of the sleek lines or brightness of the Tesla Powerpack here, it’s a rather utilitarian affair:

Hume City Council was a backer of the trial and provides a lease of land in a right of way for the battery. Now it’s had a taste of neighbourhood batteries, it would like some more.

Last Monday, Council resolved to:

“.. write to the incoming Federal government to welcome and/or encourage support for neighbourhood battery roll-out and express interest in participating in Power to the People – Community Batteries for Household Solar and other similar programs to benefit the Hume community.”

Council officers will also investigate the potential benefits and resource implications of future neighbourhood battery trials or grant programs on a case by case basis and pursue if warranted. Council notes the pursuit of community batteries is relevant to its Climate Action Plan currently under development.

On a related note, last week we reported a Victorian study has produced a guide to developing neighbourhood batteries as community assets. The report found such projects are “highly contextual” – not easily scalable and what would work well in one neighbourhood many not necessarily provide the same results in another.