A Western Australian suburb south of Perth is set to trial a community energy storage scheme that will allow solar households to store their excess rooftop generation in a shared battery, installed locally.
Now that in itself is an interesting story, but we are also interested in the next part which talks about the City of Mandurah Council voting unanimously in favour of the trial, but even more interesting – Mandurah is one of Western Australia’s top solar postcodes, (ranked third in 10 solar hotspots).
We know that Victoria falls behind some of the other states in awareness and understanding of community energy and community energy projects. Last year, Sustainability Victoria commissioned independent social research to look at the Victorian community’s interest in the ‘advanced’ climate change actions, one of which was about participating in community renewable energy projects.
They found that barriers included lack of awareness of community energy projects is an important barrier to involvement, with 55% indicating they did not know enough about community energy projects and 40% saying they did not even know that they existed.
We would love to know how to raise awareness and garner interest in community energy projects. Have a read of this project and let us know what your ideas are.
