The North East is Australia’s most active community energy region and Corryong is at the forefront of new technology.
Indigo Power is driving a number of new initiatives including building community energy hubs in towns across the North East and Southern NSW.
It has partnered with 15 community energy groups, from Albury to Seymour, to deliver clean energy solutions, community energy hubs and local renewable generation and storage.
The loss of power in the Upper Murray during and after the 2019/2020 bushfires placed an additional strain on communities and emergency services and highlighted serious deficiencies in the system.
To address these issues, Indigo Power has partnered with Upper Murray Incorporated (UMI) to deliver the Upper Murray Place Based Power Plan – Energy Resilience and Reliability Project, a combination of solar, battery and generator systems which have been supplied and installed across 23 sites in the region.
Three community scale batteries are nearing completion at Corryong Health, the Corryong Recreation Reserve and Walwa Bush Nursing Centre.
These energy systems include large solar PV and community-sized battery systems.
There have been 20 energy nodes installed which are now providing renewable energy to host sites every day and are ready to supply backup power during the next emergency outage.
For some of the publicly accessible sites, there will also be communications available in the event of an emergency. This will allow communications with a broad range of redundancy including satellite NBN, 4G boosters and localised communication solutions should there be the need.
Indigo Power is a community-owned energy company, based in regional Victoria and as a certified social enterprise, is committed to returning 50 per cent of its profits to clean energy and community projects in local towns. That means that more money that’s spent here, stays here.
It is seeking community members to become part of the Upper Murray Community Microgrid Interest Group, register your details at uppermurrayinc.com.au/media/microgridinterestgroup or to check on the general progress of the project visit uppermurrayinc.com.au.
This article appeared in the Corryong Courier, 6 April 2023.
