Community renewables a clear winner in Solar Cities trial: report

Interest in developing community-owned renewable energy projects is alive and well in rural Australia, according to the findings of a government-commissioned energy saving trial conducted in Central Victoria.

The five-year, $42 million Central Victoria Solar City (CVSC) Trial used home energy assessments, solar hot water systems, rooftop PV, retrofits, smart meters and in-home displays, to test what kind of energy could be achieved in the average household across a range of regional Victorian towns and farming areas.

Not surprisingly, the findings revealed the potential for significant savings, with net household power consumption reduced by an average of 13 per cent.

But a sub-trial on ‘whole of community’ energy saving – which commenced mid-way through the research process, in 2010 – has produced some of the CVSC study’s most interesting results.

As a direct result of this interest, CVSC funded pre-feasibility studies to investigate the best option for renewable energy generation in Newstead, Ky

abram and Murchison, and ran workshops to assist community members to unpack the findings from each study.

The pre-feasibility studies, completed by Crockford McCartney and Earth Systems, identified the future potential commercial viability of community renewable energy to generate electricity at competitive prices.

Since then, Newstead has partnered with Automation and Power Technologies (ABB) to complete a technical feasibility study into the development of a local solar power station. It also has plans to be the first Australian town to run on 100% renewable energy.

As for the results on energy savings, the house

hold intervention group overall saved approximately 2kWh per day or 730kWh per annum. This roughly equates to 3 million kWh or 3,000MWH of electricity saved by the intervention group over two years after having an assessment. Household participants saved approximately $730,000 over the two year trial as a result of the assessment.

The CVSC trial found that replacing electric storage hot water systems with solar water heaters was one of the most effective ways to cut household electricity use, with gross savings of 41 per cent of average daily consumption achieved by participants (22 per cent of savings being directly attributable to the effect of the CVSC program).

Rooftop solar was the next best way to cut a household’s consumption of electricity from the grid, delivering a saving of 13 per cent of average net energy savings. And, as the report points out, the value proposition for households to invest in solar PV today – as opposed to back in 2008, when the trial began, and the price of solar panels was almost 10 times the current price – is now even more attractive.

The home energy assessment, meanwhile, was shown to have had the greatest impact on the overall outcome of the trial, channelling participants were recruited into other household packages such as solar PV and  hot water. The CVSC trial found that home energy assessments achieved savings of 9 per cent of participants’ average daily consumption.

The project’s In-Home Display trial also demonstrated the value of smart meters, in communicating real time energy use that informs consumer behaviour. The trial found that households with an in-home display saved an average of 5 per cent on their average daily consumption by monitoring use alone.

“This is significant when it is considered that the communication was not coupled with a price signal, such as a ‘cost reflective pricing tariff’, to shift usage to a different time during the day,” says the report. “More work is needed in this area to test the impact of pricing signals on load shifting and energy efficiency.”