Five new community batteries start soaking up solar on Australia’s biggest isolated grid

Five new community batteries have been launched across Perth this week, designed to soak up excess rooftop solar, help cut energy bills, lower emissions and improve local power reliability.

The five new community batteries are part of the Albanese government’s Community Batteries for Household Solar program, which awarded Western Power, the state-owned operator of the electricity network in the southwest corner of Western Australia, $2.5 million to develop the projects.

Located in Coogee, Kinross, Bayswater, Stratton, and Port Kennedy and boasting a combined capacity of 500 kilowatts (kW), or 2.8 megawatt-hours of storage capacity, the five batteries will service around 350 households including renters, apartment dwellers, and other properties where solar panels can’t be installed.

The Coogee battery is already operational, and the batteries at Kinross, Bayswater, and Stratton are set to be operational shortly. Construction of the Port Kennedy community battery is expected to begin shortly.

These five join another 13 community batteries which have already been deployed across the South West Interconnected System (SWIS).

“Cockburn households are amongst the biggest adopters of rooftop solar in the country, which makes Coogee a logical place to deliver a community battery,” said David Scaife, local member for Cockburn.

“We know that households are doing it tough, and this new community battery in Coogee will go some way to taking the sting out of energy bills for locals every year.”

Households connected to the community batteries are expected to be able to save up to $132 each year on their power bills, together with a 4kWh off-peak offset under a retail subscription product being developed by Synergy for release later in the year.

“The Albanese Government has got investment flowing, and we’re getting on with delivering cheaper, cleaner, more reliable and more accessible renewable energy to cut energy bills and reduce emissions across all sectors of our community,” added Josh Wilson, federal assistant minister for climate change and energy.

“Western Australians have clearly embraced our state’s world-leading access to solar energy with almost half of all homes equipped with solar panels that feed into one of the world’s largest stand-alone grids. Now we are working to increase our storage capacity to make sure we get the most out of all the free solar energy being harnessed across WA.

“Our investment in batteries both large and small, like these five community batteries, combined with our work on VPPs, means that Australia’s largest state is at the forefront of the clean energy transformation, especially when it comes to storage and the coordination of consumer energy resources.”