Grant Opportunity for our Battery Project

In mid-July of this year the Government launched a grant process titled Grid Enhancing Technologies Program. The grant process is administered by Dept Industry, Science & Resources under a policy framework of Dept Climate Change, Energy, the Environment & Water.

As the name implies, the scheme aims in part to better utilise the existing electricity grid in delivering more renewable energy to consumers more rapidly.

Community PowerShare has joined in a bid for funding under the program through a consortium with an energy retailer, a novel battery technology

provider and our group as community partner. If successful, the grant funding will provide 100% of the battery installation cost, allowing our group to explore the extent to which we can deliver benefits to consumers whilst testing a new type of long duration battery storage.

Grant submissions closed in late August. With the assessment process still underway, we remain hopeful of a positive outcome.

Interestingly at time of writing, the government has just announced a limited scheme whereby some energy consumers will have access to 3 hours of “free power” during the day when renewables are flooding the grid. This is certainly welcome and recognises the fact that at those times of the day the wholesale energy market has very low or even negative pricing.

Our proposed battery scheme aims to leverage off this same low pricing to store cheap energy for use in the evening peak when market conditions see substantial cost increases.

People often ask what the impact of the current Cheaper Home Batteries scheme will have on community batteries of the type we are proposing. Again, whilst this is a good initiative by the Federal Government for those in a position to take up the offer, there is still a large number of households unable to participate. This is where large-scale shared storage still has a role to play.

The funding landscape for projects like ours has certainly got more difficult after the last round of ARENA grants, with most going to network providers. If successful in this current application, we will be full steam ahead  with project delivery.