Melbourne-headquartered not-for-profit energy transition consultancy Yarra Energy Foundation (YEF) has received funding from the Australian government’s Community Batteries for Household Solar program to install three new batteries in Victoria.
To be located southwest of Melbourne at Altona, Manor Lakes, and Torquay, the batteries will be deployed in partnership with Victorian clean electricity company Diamond Energy, which will manage the energy stored by the community battery through its virtual power plant (VPP).
The batteries will be installed as ‘front-of-meter’ systems, directly connected to the local grid where nearby residential properties are also connected.
Exact locations for the batteries in each of the suburbs are yet to be finalised and will be subject to further technical assessment, landholder and community consultation.
YEF said it will engage with communities in each of the suburbs, working closely with prospective landholders, Hobsons Bay City Council (Altona), Wyndham City Council (Manor Lakes), and Barwon Water (Torquay).
While similar to YEF’s 20 kW / 309 kWh Pixii PowerShaper Fitzroy North community battery, which was installed in 2022, YEF will be exploring new ways to deliver more value to the grid and communities through the partnership with Diamond Energy.
The October 2022 Federal Budget provided $200 million (USD 127 million) for the Community Batteries for Household Solar budget measure to deploy 400 community batteries across Australia. Of this, $171 million was allocated to ARENA to deliver at least 342 batteries.
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.