Huntlee, New South Wales:

The plan of construction of Huntlee was considered in the end of 2013. But the first phase of
construction in Huntlee began in February, 2014. The Hunter region part of New South Wales, Australia
is plan land where the community is green. Huntlee is a medium sized town there. The development of
Huntlee’s town was uncertain as there was a lot of issue on the legal level regarding the construction of
this town. The matter was in court for a long time regarding the elimination of natural habitat of the
area. But at last the decision was in favor of the construction of the town. It was planned that the four
villages will be constructed which will compromise of 5600 residential homes. The factor of population
growth was also kept in serious consideration throughout the plan to create extra rooms for the growing
population of the town. According to the first plan nearly 1700 downtown dwellings were also
constructed. A vast land was kept aside for the construction and development of parks. Proper plans
were made for the climate change and water propagation of the area.

The whole system will be converted into off grid stratergy. The CSIRO is working effectively on this
process and the whole system of the Huntlee will be made off grid from on grid system. CSIRO claims
that by 2050 the whole power system of Australia will be made off grid by using renewable power
systems. Off grid systems like solar panels and battery storage will be made more effective. Solar panels
prices and fix up costs will be reduced to about 60% with in coming years due to its excessive use.

The decrease in costs of techniques is due to the increase in charges of electricity from the grid station.
A huge number of people of Huntlee will be moved off grid in terms of solar power. The main form of
the energy in Huntlee will be solar panels. The Australian Renewable Energy Agency invested about
$442,000 to study and implement solar power technique in the new town of New South Wales Huntlee.
About 20,000 residents of the Huntlee are getting power from off grid means.

Why Solar Panels?

The weather of the Huntlee.

According to Flow Systems, energy could be generated from rooftop solar panels
that communicate with a central battery storage facility (backed up by gas) while
up to 70% of daily water needs would be met by a new membrane bioreactor
recycled water plant, with the remainder coming from rainwater harvesting and
other technologies, such as air-to-water generators. All of this would potentially
be supported by geothermal engineering and embedded networks and could be
cost-competitive, if not cheaper, than getting electricity from the grid.

“The intention is that there’s no additional upfront cost to the householder for
water and electricity,” says Huntlee’s project director, Stephen Thompson, “as it
would be embedded in the land purchase price” (which starts at $152,000).
Although the study is continuing, preliminary results have purportedly been
promising. “We’ve progressed far enough already that we think there is a
financial and technological case for it”, Thompson says.

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“Now the challenge is understanding the regulatory environment about going off-
grid in terms of electricity.”

This largely centres on whether there are suitable protections for customers, such
as what happens if someone can’t pay their bill, with a private, off-grid energy
supplier.

If there aren’t any regulatory barriers, by the end of this year Huntlee could
become Australia’s first new town near existing infrastructure that relies entirely
on renewable energy.

It’s not just new communities that are looking to be off-grid, established towns
are looking to disconnect too.

Tosh Szatow, the director of services company Energy for the People, has found
that the New South Wales/Queensland border town of Tyalgum
collectively spends around $700,000 a year on energy – with 55% of this going
toward network services, mostly because it sits at the end of a distribution line.

He says: “Over the last decade, the cost of electricity had more than doubled but
there hasn’t been anything to show for that – the power is no more reliable.

“We estimated that if Tyalgum set up a microgrid today, the cost would be around
$7m, which – compared to current electricity costs – could potentially be paid off
in 10 years’ time.” He says, with the falling price of solar panels and batteries, this
could potentially drop to around $5m.
However, while microgrid solutions are feasible for remote and new communities
(for example, Marble Bar and Nullagine in Western Australia, the island
of Pellworm in Germany and the Isle of Eigg in Scotland), disconnecting from the
national grid in cities – where the grid works efficiently and energy demand is
high – may not be cost competitive. It would require massive investment in new
infrastructure and require power lines to be re-routed to reach those further
down the transmission line.

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In fact, for the microgrid to be viable in the small town of Tyalgum, Szatow says
there needs to be 100% community support. And although the town would wish
to own their microgrid, it would likely require the support of an energy company
or network to help manage the system from a technical perspective, which could
push costs higher.

The question is whether networks would be willing to do this. Szatow says there
has been interaction between Tyalgum and grid operators Essential Energy but
“the people that run the grid have been pretty cautious about the whole thing”.

There may be other barriers to greater uptake of microgrids, beyond the research
stage. For example, network providers need customers to stay on the grid if they
are to recover the $44b they spent on upgrading grid infrastructure between
2009 and 2015 and it’s thought the more people move off-grid the higher the bills
become for those left on it.

Further, there is little regulatory incentive to change the current business model,
says Chris Dunstan, a research director at the University of Technology Sydney’s
Institute for Sustainable Futures.

“The regulatory environment is such that networks are rewarded for investments
they make in assets on the grid – which they have a monopoly on – but it’s
uncertain whether they can claim that same sort of reward for investments off-
grid,” he says.
“Regulators are reluctant to facilitate this as they are concerned it’s anti-
competitive – why should they give preferential treatment to networks providing
batteries and local generation when there are other companies out there already
providing these sorts of services?

“So we have this standoff where companies – like Western Power in WA – can
see better options but the way they are regulated doesn’t really facilitate them
supporting those options.”

Regulators are working through this and last year the Australian Energy Markets
Commission approved the Demand Management Incentive Scheme, which
permits networks to share in the benefits of alternatives to network investment
(such as off-grid technology). However, the rule won’t come into force until the
next regulatory period, starting around 2019/20.

“The solution is waiting for us, but we’ll have to wait and see how it plays out,”
Dunstan says.