Private electricity grids for renewable communities

As part of its plan to put power back in the hands of consumers, ZEN Energy has launched ZEN Communities — an ‘end to end’ service to deliver low-cost renewable energy direct to entire communities.

Since its establishment 11 years ago, Zen Energy has evolved from a solar panel installer to what has been dubbed a ‘community energy provider’. As explained by ZEN Energy Director of Innovation Richard Turner, “Suddenly we’ve got relatively new technology that has come down dramatically in cost to the point where we can build a renewable power station at a township level which takes the form of shipping container-sized batteries.

“It’s almost going back to the future — back 100 years to the old township-based power supply.”

Turner said ZEN’s community projects could range in size from single homes to townships up to 20,000 properties. He said solar, wind, biomass, biowaste or hydropower could be generated within the community and moved around the mini-grid to where it was needed or stored for later use.

“It’s all about optimising the best natural mix of resources in an area that we can harness to produce the lowest cost power then we balance that off with energy storage,” he said.

Turner said the communities would be much easier to set up in greenfield sites where there are no connections to existing power networks. He explained, “We have to get to these new developments before they turn dirt, because we have to get a distribution exemption to build a private network.”

ZEN’s first pilot project will begin next year at a housing development in Melbourne. According to Turner, there are also developers representing 100,000 homes who want to use the model for new housing developments.

“So our aim is to get this community model right and then potentially take them to other countries,” he said. “We’ve got that many inquiries already from around the world it’s ridiculous, but we’ve still got a lot of work to do in Australia with our pilots.

“Within a couple of years, you’ll see them in full swing probably all around the country.”

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