Page 767 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 8 March 2016
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Here in the ACT, as an innovation-based economy, there are significant opportunities for us to take advantage of this extraordinary global level of growth and secure some of that investment here in our own city for the benefit of our own community. That is why the Environment and Planning Directorate has been working with the CBR Innovation Network to commission a renewable energy study that has highlighted energy storage as a significant opportunity for growth in the ACT.
It is why we are working very closely with the distributive storage industry, particularly start-ups, locally based here in the ACT economy—start-up companies like Reposit Power and others—to provide an opportunity to develop a next generation renewables strategy for the ACT.
The next generation renewable strategy has now been resolved by the government based on the next generation solar expression of interest process that was run last year. This provided some very valuable insights into how we can capitalise on the opportunities that are going to exist, particularly for early adopter cities and early adopter communities, in the battery storage space.
We will be taking advantage of not only the technology but also of the economic growth opportunities that come from it. That is why the government is now pursuing its next generation renewable strategy.
MADAM SPEAKER: Supplementary question, Ms Burch.
MS BURCH: Minister, can you update the Assembly on the next generation renewable power pilot that is currently underway?
MR CORBELL: I thank Ms Burch for her supplementary. As I mentioned last year, yes, the government completed its expression of interest process for next generation solar. As a result of that we took a deliberate policy decision not to used large-scale renewable feed-in tariff law to support large-scale solar with storage but instead to support distributed solar and storage across the household, small commercial and retail sectors here in the ACT.
I announced in December last year $600,000 worth of funding for distributed solar storage grants that will be awarded through a competitive process to support energy innovation, linking renewable energy generation and storage businesses together. This will provide us with some really valuable insights into how the regulatory environment operates to support solar with storage in the household sector in particular. The pilot process will award up to three deeds of grant worth $200,000 each—with a maximum grant of one per proponent—for the installation of energy storage systems across the ACT this year. This will allow us to properly test the levels of battery storage that can be accommodated in our grid, what the regulatory challenges are that will need to be addressed and make sure that we get safety and cost issues appropriately addressed.
But what this is fundamentally about is supporting the deployment of battery storages into the household sector, giving households the opportunity to save the energy they
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