The $25.6 million in funding is seeking to find ways to secure reliable and preferably renewably generated electricity for regional and rural communities, some of which still rely on diesel generators. The microgrid projects supported through the second round of funding from the federal government’s Regional and Remote Communities Reliability Fund are spread across Australian states.
A project on the New South Wales South Coast, a region ravaged by the 2020 bushfires, attracted one of the highest proportions of the funding ($3.1 million). The project is being led by the Australian National University and is seeking to establish ‘islandable’ microgrids which could maintain power supply in townships even if connection infrastructure to the broader grid is damaged by bushfires, as it was last year.
Several projects looking to source renewably generated electricity for remote Indigenous communities have also receive grant funding, including Ener-G Management Group’s Napranum & Muralug Microgrid projects in Queensland, Generators and Off-Grid Energy’s microgrids at Indigenous outstations in the Kimberley of Western Australia, and Original Power’s Borroloola project in the Northern Territory.
Federal energy minister, Angus Taylor, said the Regional and Remote Communities Reliability Fund will provide around $45 million for feasibility studies in over 110 communities across Australia, with a further $50 to be administered by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) to support microgrid pilot studies in regional communities.
A full list of the funded projects can be found here.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.