Geelong Sustainability has been so incredibly proud to deliver the Community Power Hub Barwon South-West over the past 12 months on behalf of the Barwon Region Alliance for Community Energy (BRACE) and with funding support from the Sustainability Victoria on behalf of the Victorian Government.
Our team has worked tirelessly with community groups, local councils, and not-for-profit organisations from across the Barwon South-West to get community energy projects off the ground and build a significant pipeline of shovel ready projects.
This video shows but a small snippet of the impact this project has had across the community.
We were able to support the installation of solar systems at the Point Lonsdale Bowls Club, Torquay Tigers Football & Netball Club, Anglesea Art House, Apollo Bay Mechanics hall with generous donations from RACV Solar.
We established the Community Energy Revolving Fund, and delivered its first project by providing an interest free loan to install a 60kW solar system at the YMCA Newtown Stadium. The Revolving Fund provides community organisations with an interest-free loan to install renewable technologies on their buildings. The resulting energy bill savings are utilised to repay the loan into the Revolving Fund, and the cycle continues. To 30 June 2022, the Revolving Fund has raised $13,810 from public donations, and $6,650 has been repaid from the YMCA Newtown.
We also delivered a series of webinars, which sought to provide general information around current trending topics in the energy and sustainability world. The webinars we delivered, which you can watch back, were:
- Engaging Your Community: Empowering Action at a Grassroots Level – 8 Feb 2022
- Inspiring Women Leading Climate Action – 8 March 2022
- Energy Efficiency for Renters & Homeowners with Tim Forcey – 3 May 2022
- Electrify with Saul Griffith – 31 May 2022
In addition to our online content we held four in-person community forums in Torquay, Warrnambool, Hamilton and Portland, with the aim of upskilling community members and increasing knowledge around the benefits of community energy. We collaborated with Community Power Agency to deliver the Torquay and Warrnambool forums, and many other local community energy groups from BRACE.
In June 2022 we launched an online information resource for energy efficiency called Energy Tips. The goal of this website is to help inform community members in the areas of home and workplace energy efficiency, and is particularly tailored to the Geelong region.
In addition to this we have developed a project pipeline of community renewable energy projects that once implemented would see over 300kW of solar across 13 not-for-profit organisations.
We were so pleased to deliver, through the program, three Feasibility Studies for community energy groups across the region. The first was the Queenscliff Community Battery Feasibility Study, in which Wave Consulting set out to identify the most viable route for the Borough of Queenscliff to become a net zero community by implementing energy storage solutions for pre-existing and planned solar generation.
We then focused further down the coast for the Apollo Bay Energy Autonomy Plan, where Enhar looked at the unreliability of the power supply to the isolated town and considered how this might be remedied through use of a renewable energy solution such as a neighbourhood battery.
Finally, we turned our attention to the whole region, and engaged Sourced Energy to conduct the Barwon South West Community Energy Retailer Feasibility Study, with Karen Weaver providing facilitation expertise. The study set out to determine whether there was a desire for a community energy retailer specific to the region, and whether this would be possible within current market conditions and retailers.
The Community Power Hub was 1 of 7 across the state, funded by Sustainability Victoria on behalf of the Victorian Government, with the aim to increase the access to and involvement in community renewable energy throughout Victoria.
Unfortunately, with no further funding the Community Power Hub Barwon South-West finished on June 30, 2022.
We would like to thank our staff Steve Turnock, Megan Discher, Keith Reynard and Emilie Flynn for their incredible work delivering this program that will have a lasting impact for the communities and organisations they have supported.