The Community Energy Program in Action
Ana Spataru
On the evening of 29 April, 24 of our Community Energy Program members gathered at Darebin Parklands and online for our first workshop.
From the energy in the room, to the engagement after, it was a genuinely good night, with lots to talk and think about.
We walked through how the program works, what community energy actually means, and we spent time exploring electricity bills, identifying useful information on the bill.
We now also have a Member Hub for the community: https://www.villagepower.com.au/community-energy
The feedback from attendees was warm. Most found the workshop very useful, and “being part of a community-led renewable energy initiative” was most valued. There was a general sentiment that it is appreciated to learn how the program works in ractical terms. As with any group, we have different types of members and our more technically minded members asked for a deeper dive into battery sizing and network needs.
Something for us to keep in mind. From our members living in apartment buildings, we heard that if the program is encouraging people to shift appliance use to off-peak hours, we should be mindful that running washing machines and dryers late at night affects neighbours. A fair and important point.
Our second workshop will run on Tuesday 2nd June. We have asked all members to fill in the data consent form, this is what allows us to access the energy data through Jemena and begin generating individual community energy reports. Without it, we cannot show what the program is actually doing. If you haven’t already completed it, please do so at: https://www.villagepower.com.au/ce-energy-data-form
To deepen what we are doing, the Village Power team has made a submission to the Australian Energy Market Commission on a proposed rule change that would require electricity distributors - like Jemena - to publish better data about what is happening inside local networks. You can read the full submission on our website, under Resources: https://www.villagepower.com.au/resources
Our submission proposed a simple addition that requires distributors to calculate and publish what we call community energy. That is the proportion of a suburb's energy that is generated and consumed locally. Right now, nobody publishes this. Distributors know how much energy flows in and out of a zone substation, but there is no standard measure of how much of that demand is already being met by rooftop solar and local batteries before it reaches the broader network.
This addition matters because if the data were to be publicly available, any community group, any investor, any council could look it up and immediately see where local storage and demand management would make the biggest difference. Our Community Energy Program is designed to prove that community energy can be measured and sharing local energy works. The rule change would make it possible to measure it everywhere, not just in Alphington. And it would measure it for the benefit of consumers, not just the energy system at large.