TRANSCRIPT:
Dimity Taylor is a sheep farmer in Bannister, 100 kilometres north of Canberra.
She says a wind turbine casting shadows over her property is what inspired her to invest in a local solar project.
"The community is owning it. It's not some big foreign company, that we actually get to be owning this project and driving this project."
The solar farm in Goulburn is owned by 300 local residents, as part of a group named 'Community Energy 4 Goulburn'.
Vice president Ed Suttle says the farm will consist of up to 4,500 solar panels, becoming the first such Australian community-run solar farm with a battery.
Mr Suttle says the group formed out of frustration at a lack of action by authorities, after eight years of planning and consultation.
"People who were fed up with the apparent lack of activity at state and federal level about developing renewables.”
There’s currently 145 community-driven energy groups all around Australia - triple the amount that existed in 2015.
And there are currently three million rooftops in Australia installed with solar installations.
Carl Tidemann is a senior researcher in climate solutions at the Climate Council of Australia.
He says whether it's a large community project, or just a couple of solar panels on your roof - any renewable energy is a big win for the climate.
"Currently, the grid is still on average majority produced by fossil fuels. And so they're producing lots of emissions. When lots of solar production is occurring, those electrons that are being produced to create the electricity are essentially zero emissions minus the emissions that it takes to build solar panels and install them and things but they're very, very low compared to fossil fuels. So the big win for the climate."
Dr Gabrielle Kuiper is a distributed energy resources expert at the Institute for Energy, Economics and Financial Analysis.
She says solar can be a cheap and efficient source of energy on any scale.
"People are only being paid a small amount to export to the grid. Whereas of course, it costs you a lot to import from the grid. So that's why so many households are putting solar on their roof. At the moment, you can put a solar system on your house, and it will pay for itself in three years. There's the benefit to having it on your roof because you're only paying for the solar system. You don't need to use the local poles and fcc wires so much. So your charges for those network paths decrease when you put a solar system on your roof."
The New South Wales government has provided the Goulburn Community Energy project with a grant worth $2.3 million dollars.
Mr Suttle says part of the money is being used to educate other communities.
"Part of that money is to fund a knowledge-sharing document when we finished, which is a template for any other community in the entire country to do what we've done.”
The owners of the farm are hoping to be able to sell power to the grid by the end of this year.
Ms Taylor says she's looking forward to seeing if other towns adapt a similar energy model.
"I really hope that this model can be expanded. And I feel like this project in particular is paving the way."
