Enova’s mission to enable local communities to generate, store and share their own renewable energy has been significantly boosted by an almost $1 million grant from the NSW Government Regional Community Energy Fund.

The grant will help Enova commission and install a 2MWh battery in a regional NSW location, to be operated as Enova’s shared community battery, in a project partnership with Enosi Australia and the University of Newcastle.

The battery will be used to store energy; and, that stored energy will be able to be accessed and used by participants of the project at various times of the day.

This project will allow the participants’ own generated and stored energy from their solar panels to circulate amongst other participating households, with the battery also providing another source of localised energy in the mix.

Project Participants and Partners

The project is a trial that will involve a maximum of 500 solar and non-solar households who are existing and new Enova customers.

Enova Community Energy Chair, Alison Crook, said the NSW government funding elevates Enova’s standing as a viable and pioneering retailer. “We’re effectively using our social enterprise structure to deliver real benefits to locals in communities.

“Community batteries are one of the last pieces in the puzzle to bring efficient control of energy generation, storage, and supply right back to where they belong: in the hands of people in their own communities.”

Enova CEO Felicity Stening welcomed this opportunity for Enova, “We’re thrilled to have succeeded in this NSW Government Regional Community Energy Fund grant. It will enable Enova to make its debut into grid-scale energy storage and bring peer-to-peer energy trading to our customers. Enova is absolutely stepping into its role as a leader in helping communities build energy self-sufficiency.”

Enova will buy and manage the battery, Enosi will provide the platform that will allow solar and non-solar customers to share and purchase energy with the battery and the University of Newcastle will be collecting and analysing data from the project.

Benefit for communities

This initiative will inform a model that can be adapted by more communities – so that the vision for locally generated, stored and shared energy can truly be brought to life.

The project aims to:

• Lower the cost of your energy bill;
• Allow solar energy to be available to households at night and when the sun’s not shining;
• Strengthen the energy network by being available on really high demand days;
• Reduce carbon emissions; and
• Allow people who don’t have solar panels to access rooftop solar.

It’s about supporting the energy grid as well as supporting communities to get the most benefit from rooftop solar.

Interested? Register your interest!

We’d love for anyone interested in being part of this project to fill out our simple form on the project webpage and we’ll be in touch with more details soon.

You can be an existing customer or willing to become an Enova customer in order to participate.

We know that some of our customers who have been with us since the beginning may be very keen to actively follow and learn about the community energy trading platform that we’ll be implementing with partner Enosi.

What is certain for everyone is that your involvement in this pioneering project will directly contribute to the transition of Australia's energy systems.

Making energy transition a reality

Electricity will no longer be travelling long distances from polluting coal-fired generation down long wires and poles to reach your house anymore. Instead, energy is now starting to be generated locally and much more efficiently from renewable sources and now being stored and shared locally.

The implications for local communities and economies of this localised and clean method are tremendous. Instead of energy money leaving communities and going to pay bills to large, often foreign-owned corporations, the money stays circulating locally where it can flow into more of our local businesses.

“The times we are living in are uncertain indeed. As we re-familiarise ourselves in communities with the power of growing food locally and of supporting local businesses, projects like these are bringing more opportunities to local communities to build local economic strength and resilience – while at the same time reducing climate change impact,” said Felicity.

“We’re all in this together. We're excited that this shared community battery model brings energy into the hands of communities. We’d love for you to get involved.”

We’re going to start taking your expressions of interest now, but the project won’t be kicking off until later in 2020. By registering your interest, we’ll keep you updated as the project develops.

This will be the first of many community energy projects for Enova as we begin to realise our vision and implement on-the-ground solutions towards building community energy resilience. We’re looking forward to keeping you updated as the project develops.

In the meantime, with 60 per cent of our customers having rooftop solar, we already know our customer base contributes a significant amount of renewable energy towards Australia’s transition. Thank you all.

More information

Enosi’s CEO, Steve Hoy also welcomed the support from the Regional Community Energy Fund and its partnership with Enova, “Enosi recognises the importance of direct support for renewable energy projects in regional areas.  This project allows Enova’s regional consumers to share in the use of battery storage and save money.”

Enova, along with project partners Enosi and the University of Newcastle, have successfully secured over $998,000 from the NSW Government to part-fund this Enova first.

Enova is embarking on an asset-building strategy as part of its purpose to support local communities to generate, store, and share renewable energy.  A shared community battery offers an alternative to individual households purchasing their own battery storage system.

Enova is Australia’s first community-owned energy retailer, formed as a social enterprise to reduce carbon emissions and facilitate the transition to a renewable energy future, by building sustainable and resilient communities, where renewable energy is accessible by all.

Enosi Australia (www.enosi.energy) is developing software to enable trading of renewable energy resources for consumers across Australia.

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