Experts from the Australian National University explain how battery storage installed at neighbourhood level can benefit a very wide range of stakeholders.
Then there are the little community batteries that can be scattered around cities and shared between households in a particular neighbourhood or street. It’s this kind that is the focus of Labor’s proposal. The basic idea of these community batteries is to allow households that generate their own solar power to pool their excess electricity in shared storage for later use.
Why might you need one?
In Australia one in every six households have solar, but only one in 60 have battery storage. For individual households, a community battery is a good way to lower costs by shifting the cost and the risks from installation, maintenance and replacement onto a private company or council to take care of.