The suburbs of the Illawarra need community owned batteries. There needs to be decentralised control of energy. With the uptake of solar PV systems on households, residents need to & want to own a piece of the energy that they create. Now is the time to do that. The current energy system & grid is outdated, leading to many inefficiencies & wasted energy. Household batteries offer a solution to this & to the cost of your energy bill. Community owned batteries will do the exact same but on a larger scale, ensuring the protection of the local community from oligopoly energy corporations who have monopolised the market for far too long.
The project could be modelled of those being built and trialed in WA with Western Power and Synergy or Hepburn Wind Farm in Daylesford, Victoria. The success of these projects, in particular Hepburn Wind Farm, offers a blueprint for the suburbs of the Illawarra to replicate such success. It offers the chance for locals to invest their own money & to own a share of the project, whilst earning a return on their investment. Furthermore, it provides our community & region the chance to become apart of the solution to fight climate change, reduce our carbon emissions & to play a role in upgrading & fixing our outdated energy grid. However, with the uptake of residential solar PV & battery systems one must ask how much of a risk does this pose to traditional energy corporations & their structure? What is the future of traditional energy companies in this age?
Historically, electricity was generated by centralised power stations controlled by centralised governments & corporations. With the uptake in solar PV & the reduction in costs of solar & battery technology, we see the emergence of an energy system that is challenging this centralised approach, upending the industry & causing havoc amongst the major players, but more importantly presenting us with the opportunity to create a new energy system. A decentralised energy system that will be community owned & operated. The industry is undergoing major changes, changes that strongly indicate that we must adopt micro community batteries & grids. We must invest in community owned batteries to protect ourselves from major market forces & inefficiencies that threaten to disrupt our energy supply. We must protect ourselves from failures occurring elsewhere, so when erratic weather disrupts a power station in another part of the state, our batteries continue to provide us with the vital power needed for our homes, hospitals & businesses.
The future of energy will be community owned & maintained. Power for us, by us!