Victoria speeds up neighbourhood battery installations to maximise rooftop solar

Victoria is accelerating its $10.9 million neighbourhood batteries program in an aim to maximise the broad uptake of rooftop solar to store cheap, clean renewable energy at a local level and deliver it back to the communities that supply it.

As part of the second round of the state’s Neighbourhood Battery Initiative (NBI), the government says it  is investing $1.5 million for another two neighbourhood batteries in the suburbs of Richmond and Docklands.

Neighbourhood-scale batteries can increase energy stability and enable the grid to support more rooftop solar by storing generated electricity during the day and discharging it back at night.

Under the second round, Yarra Energy Foundation will deliver a 120kW/390kWh battery and off-street EV charge-point installed at the Burnley Backyard, a council community centre in Richmond.

Also, the City of Melbourne will install a150kW/300kWh system at Library at the Dock, the first in a planned 5-megawatt (MW) network of neighbourhood-scale batteries.

The battery installations are designed to help meet Victoria’s energy storage targets set out under Labor Party premier Daniel Andrews, reaching a massive 2.6 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy storage capacity by 2030, with an increased target of 6.3 GW of storage by 2035.

A third round of the NBI opens in early 2023, with further details not yet released.

Round 2 projects are scheduled for completion by June 2024.