Recently Leah Sertori from Central Victoria Solar City met with a group of people from Newstead 2021. The group, convened in 2008, is well known for its capability in leading and implementing initiatives that benefit the community of Newstead. Since 2008 it has a) established a Newstead website b) developed and implemented free internet access in the town c) created a community garden d) installed a pirate ship in the playground e) established a local weather station f) conducted a survey on energy use and more. Newstead is a very tight-knit, resourceful community.
The Offer
Leah met with the group to run them through the opportunities to engage in the solar city project as well as an overview of what the project hopes to achieve. Leah offered to provide the group with some support from the CVSC office if they were interested in engaging their whole town in reducing their energy use and engaging in renewable energy creation. We discussed a community based challenge, for residents of Newstead to reduce their energy consumption by up to 20% and to shift to 100% solar renewable energy in the next twelve months to two years. At this stage, the idea is very fluid and open. It will be further shaped by the residents of Newstead.
We identified the following benefits of a potential project:
- Converting an entire town (around 150 residences) to renewable energy is a great story
- Highly visible project
- Will attract interest from visitors to Newstead
- Will engage the entire community in a project that benefits everyone
- Opportunity for Newstead to generate income from excess energy created by PV
- Opportunity for residents to complete some training to become qualified energy auditors, generating employment outcomes
- CVSC can take that model to other small towns in Central Victoria, its scalable
- We can share the lessons learned and the towns experience through a media campaign
There was a huge amount of interest from the group in the potential for Newstead to build a small solar park, if they secured pledge amounts to cover the financing of the project.
There was generally a great atmosphere at the meeting and enormous excitement around what could be achieved.
Next steps include:
- Leah to find out how much electricity Newstead currently uses daily, monthly, annually from Powercor.
- Genevieve, Geoff and the Newstead Gang to hold another meeting to scope the potential for the project
- CVSC to facilitate a community planning session with up to 25 residents and business owners/operators to develop a project.
- Newstead and CVSC to develop a project proposal which provides the scope of the project, its intended outcomes, deliverables and timeframes.
- Leah to engage John Harvey from Central Victorian Greenhouse Alliance in the discussion and Sally Morris, Manager of Economic Development from the Mount Alexander Shire.
