Renewable energy: Yackandandah power play

A NORTH East Victorian community is on a quest to be using 100 per cent renewable energy by 2022, and the roofs of their homes and buildings are providing the solution.

Winning way: Ben McGowan, Matthew Charles-Jones and Ron Boulton, of the sustainability award-winning Totally Renewable Yackandandah. Picture: Chloe Smith

Yackandandah residents are looking up.

The North East Victorian community is on a quest to be using 100 per cent renewable energy by 2022, and the roofs of their homes and buildings are providing the solution.

Matthew Charles-Jones, from Totally Renewable Yackandandah, said more than 40 per cent of rooftops — households, businesses and community buildings — in the town had solar panels, compared with about 20 per cent when the project started in 2014.

“We’re not experts in energy, all we’re doing is working alongside a whole community,” Mr Charles-Jones said. “This isn’t about the activity of a handful of people or TRY, it’s the enterprise of a whole town.”

Last week, Yackandandah won the sustainable and resilient communities award at the Banksia Sustainability Awards in Sydney.

Mr Charles-Jones admitted the goal of using 100 per cent renewable energy in the next five years was “ambitious in the Australian context”.

“The thing the energy industry is crying out for is real certainty in policy,” he said.

At the start of next month, TRY will launch Yackandandah’s own “mini-grid” which will eventually allow the community to store and share any excess power it generates.

“We’re installing control systems on each of the new solar systems we’re doing,” Mr Charles-Jones said.

“Depending on the price of electricity, the volume of charge in the battery, and the general way a household uses electricity, it can be recorded and so it could choose to export the electricity to charge a battery or share that power with neighbours or the grid.”

Mondo Power, part of AusNet Services, has helped facilitate the project. Manager of energy services, Mark Judd said the community “have shown absolute leadership in the path”.