Battery Working Group Members Attend Conference at ANU

On Wednesday 29 Nov, a small number of our working group attended a conference at ANU Canberra titled – The 2nd Future of Neighbourhood Batteries.

Hosted by ANU’s Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program – the conference brought together industry leaders, regulators, funding agencies, academics, and of course community groups from around the country. It was rich content and a productive time to network.

It was obvious that the path to more general take up of Community Batteries is not well laid out, and to some extent we are creating the future through our efforts. Other community-based groups face the same challenges as us, around siting of batteries, getting hold of the necessary information from grid providers, and of course funding. We are still looking for some sort of startup funding, but NSW seems a little behind in giving a leg up to groups like ours. We continue to lobby at the State and Federal level.

On the question of funding, Leon Chanter from ARENA spoke about the response to Round 1 - Community Batteries for Household Solar funding offer. With a budget of $120M, ARENA received applications totalling $1.3B. Obviously, there is a lot of competition in the funding space, and a groundswell of interest in these types of projects. We also learnt that the Round 2 will now be offered probably in the first quarter of 2024.

Our group continues to work toward having a well-rounded funding proposal when the time comes for submissions. We are still engaged with Council, prospective retailers, and battery providers.

Thank you for your continued interest in our project, and we wish all well for the festive season.