Townsville Declared A QLD Local Renewable Energy Zone

Queensland’s Miles Government wants to boost rooftop solar power and energy storage capacity in Townsville, and have non-solar households sharing the benefits of locally generated clean electricity.

In Townsville, solar panels are already a common sight on the rooftops of homes and businesses. The Miles Government wants the community to generate even more renewable energy, but also store more of it and share it locally.

To this end, it’s investing $40 million in the Townsville Local Renewable Energy Zone (LREZ) pilot project. This will see deployment of up to 8.4MW/18.8MWh of battery storage and optimization of behind-the-meter customer assets. These assets go beyond just solar panels and batteries to include items such as electric vehicles and EV chargers.

As part of Townsville LREZ operations, solar households will export surplus energy generated during the day into big-ish batteries, and this electricity will be supplied to additional households during peak demand in the evenings.

“That means households that have not previously had access to cheaper electricity generated through rooftop solar will now be able to access the benefits,” states the announcement.

Cheaper Electricity?

Exactly how Townsville households will get their electricity cheaper wasn’t explained. In some models currently being trialed elsewhere, such as the Bungarribee Community Battery in Sydney, households rent battery capacity for a reasonable monthly fee and receive a rebate for avoiding consumption of wider mains grid supply. Other community/neighbourhood/local battery projects just avoid more expensive network upgrades, which costs all customers and not just those in that part of the network.

But Queensland Minister for Energy and Clean Economy Jobs Mick de Brenni was keen to spruik the benefits at a local level.

“Just like public ownership of Queensland’s energy assets, the LREZ project will put control of energy into the communities’ hands,” he said. “This exciting LREZ initiative, which is the first of its kind in Queensland, puts everything on the table, including more affordable power, access to the benefits of rooftop solar for renters, innovative network solutions.”

While the LREZ concept overall may be the first of its kind for the state, Townsville isn’t the first Queensland LREZ community announced. That distinction went to Caloundra a week ago, which is another home solar power hotspot. The investment there will basically be the same as in Townsville.

The LREZs will also help stimulate clean energy business opportunities and job growth, and that’s good news for solar installers in Townsville (and Caloundra too). Additionally, LREZs will improve the reliability and resilience of energy supply. This is an issue that became more pressing after coal-fired and aptly-named Callide C4 exploded back in 2021, followed by the C3 unit crapping itself in 2022 and other Callide capers.

Townsville And Caloundra First, But Not The Last

The pilot project will involve universities and other organisations carrying out research on key elements of the initiative. These include customer incentive programs, economic models, customer adoption, energy consumption/generation behaviour, and technical standards. This work will inform the future design and development of LREZ projects across Queensland.

The Miles Government also recently announced Energy Queensland had received the green light for another 18 local network-connected batteries across the state, funded by a $240 million Budget commitment. These will represent Stage 5 of the Energy Queensland battery program. Previous stages have resulted in 30 local network-connected batteries and three flow battery systems deployed, or currently under construction.