Endeavour Energy introduces first NSW community microgrid
New South Wales utility Endeavour Energy is implementing a community microgrid to power two coastal towns during storms and bushfires.
The utility has reported making progress with the state’s first of its kind community microgrid, which will power around 100 homes in Bawley Point and Kioloa, 250km south of Sydney on Australia’s southeast coast.
The AU$8 million (US$5.3 million) project is on track to be operational by the end of the year, Endeavour Energy has reported.
The community microgrid will act as a self-contained energy system, harnessing electricity from renewable sources including rooftop solar, home-based batteries, and a 3MW grid connected battery, strategically positioned between the two communities.
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This configuration empowers the microgrid to operate autonomously during outages, forming an island of power for the community, a statement reads.
Guy Chalkley, Endeavour Energy’s chief executive officer, said the microgrid will lead the way in making isolated communities more resilient while laying the foundation for future renewable energy solutions.
Bawley Point and Kioloa are both situated on the edge of the Endeavour Energy network and prone to adverse weather events and thus vulnerable to supply disruptions.
“The grid independence provided by this microgrid becomes essential for their survival and safeguarding our regional communities,” he said.
“What makes this microgrid the first of its kind is the customer centric and integrated approach to planning – we can call upon a customer’s energy resources such as rooftop solar and batteries to add resilience to the network and the community’s power supply.”
Endeavour Energy, which reports co-designing the solution in partnership with the local community, anticipate that it will serve as a blueprint for other communities and is exploring additional locations that could benefit from similar microgrid installations.
Related Knowledge Center: Offshore wind energy
Over the next decade, U.S. offshore wind power is expected to grow from a single 30-megawatt wind farm off Rhode Island to more than 2,000 MW of capacity along the Atlantic Seaboard. There are contracts for wind power off the coasts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated the United States has over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential, enough to power the country four times over.
The growth in part being spurred by state solicitations, including in New York, where then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) set a commitment of 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035, and in Connecticut, where in June 2021, Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed legislation authorizing the construction of 2,000 MW of offshore wind by 2030.
The offshore development is also being driven by an investment tax credit set to end in December 2019 and is equal to 12 percent of expenditures. U.S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) have introduced a bill to extend the tax credit for up to eight years.
The Interior Department has held eight competitive lease sales that resulted in 15 offshore wind leases over 1.7 million acres that has the potential for 21 GW of capacity. In February 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management completed a bidding process that realized $4.37 billion for 488,000 acres across six lease areas in federal waters off New York and New Jersey.
Projects have also been proposed off the Southeast coast, off California and Hawaii, and for the Great Lakes.