Published: 4 Feb 2021, 12:38
By:
Andy Colthorpe
Another community battery trial called Powerbank in Perth, Western Australia is already underway through government-owned entity Western Power and utility company Synergy, using Tesla Powerpack battery storage systems. Its second phase launched in early 2020. Image: Synergy.
New ways to increase the numbers of people that can benefit from battery storage are being tried out in Melbourne, Australia, by one of the city’s electricity distribution network owners, in partnership with an energy non-profit.
What have been dubbed “solar sponges” - batteries deployed to ‘soak up’ and store locally generated solar PV electricity - could go into shared ownership, reducing the cost versus homeowners installing their own individual battery storage units.
Clean house WORKING ORDER
According to CNN,
Joe Biden will today sign a presidential memorandum to “reverse restrictions on abortion access domestically and abroad imposed and expanded by the Trump administration” specifically he will be rescinding a ban on government funding for foreign nonprofits that perform or promote abortions, aka the “Mexico City Policy”.
Biden will also sign orders to reopen federal marketplaces selling
Affordable Care Act health plans, and lower recent barriers to joining Medicaid,
Democrats also reintroduced legislation to bring America’s hourly minimum wage from a miserly US$7.25 to $15 incrementally, mind you, with a final date of 2025, after which the wage would be tied with indexation (or, y’know, Republicans take the White House and nix it entirely) while Biden will tomorrow sign orders expanding refugee intakes from Trump’s historically-low figures and establish a taskforce to reunite migrant families separated under the
Yarra Energy Foundation
MELBOURNE Victorian electricity distributor, CitiPower, and the Yarra Energy Foundation (YEF) have signed a new agreement to unlock the potential of community-scale battery storage in the Melbourne CBD and inner-city suburbs.
The partnership will investigate a ground-breaking new model of community battery ownership including crowdsourcing local investment in what is considered a Victorian-first. The aim is to create a network of batteries, or “solar sponges”, located on the low-voltage electricity network across inner-Melbourne operated by CitiPower. This unique trial will focus on creating a sustainable commercial model that delivers benefits for consumers and networks.
The project’s first phase is underway to identify the trial sites and gauge community sentiment as well as develop the potential funding model and relationships with market service providers including energy retailers. This will inform the second phase, which will aim to deploy the