Page 1271 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 11 April 2018
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This is a great reflection on the ACT. In being an early mover and adopting this approach, we have been able to not only play our part as global citizens in seeking to tackle the issue of emissions reductions, but also position the ACT extremely well in being recognised as a leader in the renewable energy space.
What we now have as a result of some of those investments is that not only are we delivering renewable energy at record low prices, but our innovative reverse auction program leveraged an estimated $500 million in local investment benefits for Canberra and we were able to attract and sustain the attention of the national renewables industry. A number of the companies involved have now brought their business here to Canberra. All of the ACT’s wind farm operators have established their Asia-Pacific headquarters here in the city, and around two gigawatts of renewable energy capacity is managed from Canberra’s renewable energy precinct. When you think about the fact that there is around four gigawatts of renewable energy in Australia, you get a sense of the scale of what is being done from this city.
A key local investment outcome of the reverse auction program is the $25 million next generation energy storage grants program, which is supporting the rollout of around 36 megawatts of smart energy storage to 5,000 Canberra homes and businesses over the next couple of years. For members who do not generally talk about megawatts, megawatt hours and those sorts of things, to put the figure of 36 megawatts in context, the South Australian battery is about 100 megawatts in one installation. It gives you a sense of how large this program is. It is one of the largest residential battery rollout programs on the planet; it positions the ACT as being the leader in this space and also provides an excellent opportunity for industry in this city to get very practically involved in rolling out this rapidly emerging technology and becoming a centre of excellence and a centre of expertise.
We have around 700 systems installed to date through ACT households, the installation rising rapidly in recent months. The program includes around $5 million of grants to local businesses over three funding rounds to subsidise the cost of installing battery storage systems across the ACT. As I say, that makes it one of the most ambitious schemes in the country. Many of the firms involved are well-known local operators. It is providing them with further opportunities to expand their expertise and business opportunities, in the first instance in Canberra, but ideally it will position them to potentially export that know-how as this technology takes off across the planet.
One of the important features of this program is that each system installed is required to meet specific smart requirements and collect critical data to inform industry research and development. One of the parts of that is that all that data is freely available so this is enabling a range of research institutions and the like to further develop their knowledge in this space.
While the full extent of the potential benefits of incorporating these smart features was not known at the commencement of the scheme, clever policy design has facilitated and led to a promising collaboration between those in the industry in the form of a virtual power plant, which is one of the key points of Ms Orr’s motion. She
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