Welcome back! You get three clues and we are asking you to name the place.
It has an unreliable power supply; businesses are forking out around $50,000 in capital and running costs for generators; and the locals fear it could be the next Mallacoota if a major bushfire eventuates.
Right! Apollo Bay. Well done.
With those issues on the table and the support of the Apollo Bay Chamber of Commerce, volunteer run not-for-profit community group Southern Otways Sustainable (S.O.S) set out to find a solution.
Armed with a grant from the Victorian Government and the Colac Otway Shire Council, S.O.S engaged the services of Mondo, an experienced power industry consultant, to undertake a study to investigate the feasibility of a neighbourhood battery for the coastal cluster of Apollo Bay, Skenes Creek and Marengo.
Through an online survey and engagement at several local markets, the community was asked to confirm drivers for the battery and rank them in order of most to least important. Participants identified the following, in order:
1. support the strong desire of the community to be using 100% renewable energy by 2030;
2. create a more reliable electricity supply;
3. create power resilience for residents and businesses in the event of a bushfire, extreme weather event or other natural disaster;
4. enable greater roof-top solar exports from homes and businesses.
Mondo got to work, assessing the technical aspects, and recommended an advanced grid-connected microgrid with a central 4.95MW/10MWh grid scale battery energy storage system for Apollo Bay.
Unfortunately the system would not be capable of supporting Skenes Creek and Marengo due to their distance from Apollo Bay. The study found each township would need its own battery, however, it also identified that refuge buildings in Apollo Bay could serve as ‘shelters’ for those in Marengo and Skenes Creek during critical power outages.
Now let’s delve a little deeper into Mondo’s proposed solution.
An advanced grid-connected microgrid is a system built around a central, grid forming battery.
A grid-connected microgrid comprises a local group of energy sources, storage devices (the big battery, home batteries) and loads that are interconnected by the traditional distribution network but can also operate autonomously from the wider network when required - think unplanned power outage.
A microgrid can also manage power quality and facilitate connection and control of various energy sources. Some components of the microgrid could include electric vehicle charging stations and demand management devices like the Ubi. If you installed solar in 2019/20 through the bulk buy program you may be familiar with the Ubi.
A grid scale battery is an energy storage system that is connected to the Medium Voltage network and would support the whole town of Apollo Bay by addressing issues at a network level.
It is a ‘front of the meter’ connection as opposed to a ‘behind the meter’ connection such as a home battery.
That’s the technical solution in a nutshell - a big battery connected to a micro-grid to keep the town running when the network goes down. But running for how long?
Stay tuned for the next article!
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