A small group of Goulburn residents gathered around kitchen tables in late 2014 to discuss a simple idea: making their own clean electricity. Twelve years later, that discussion became Australia’s first community-owned solar farm paired with a large-scale battery. The 1.4-megawatt facility, backed by a four-megawatt-hour battery, officially opened on an old industrial site on the edge of the New South Wales regional city. The project can generate enough electricity to power about 500 homes, sending power directly into the local grid. The project depended on years of shared effort and persistence. About 300 investors, most of them local residents, raised $3.3 million in capital, along with $2.3 million in grants from the NSW Government. According to the Business Council of Co-operatives and Mutuals (BCCM), the project provides a practical example of how regional communities can help lead the move to renewable energy through community ownership.
Roots of a decade-long initiative
The project began with Community Energy for Goulburn (CE4G), a volunteer sub-committee formed by local sustainability group The Goulburn Group. Organisers wanted a system where every member had an equal say, regardless of how much money they invested. They formed the Goulburn Community Energy Cooperative and registered it through the NSW Department of Fair Trading. Under the cooperative structure, each member has one vote. Someone who invested $400 had the same voting power as someone who invested $4,000. This meant no investor could use greater financial power to control the project. Writing in energy publication The Energy, founding member and CE4G president Peter Fraser said building trust began with the local community. Before making formal applications, volunteers went door to door around the proposed solar farm to explain the idea and hear people’s concerns. Fraser wrote that there were no objections from those neighbours. The chosen site was an old, unused industrial site beside the railway corridor between Sydney and Canberra. The land was not square and was not ideally aligned to face north, which created some design challenges. But the site was easy to see from the road and railway, giving the project a public showcase. It was also next to an existing 33kV power line, which made the grid connection easier.
Navigating delays and unexpected hurdles
Delays, policy changes and rising costs repeatedly pushed the project timeline out. Organisers dealt with global supply problems during the pandemic, higher material costs and long reviews by the local council and electricity network owner. Because the solar farm is inside the Sydney water catchment area, the project also faced extra planning rules. Fraser wrote in The Energy that Sydney Water required considerable landscaping measures to help stop sediment from reaching catchment dams. These requirements added more work before construction could begin. Tax rules also surprised the organisers. As Fraser explained in The Energy, government grants for capital projects can be taxable, so tax had to be paid before the solar farm was earning any income. Fraser wrote that the project team had not known about this, and that the government that provided the original grant had not known either. The work continued with specialist project developer Komo Energy, which stayed involved for more than eight years. Fraser credited the company with helping the cooperative through the many challenges involved in developing the project.
Keeping financial benefits within the town
Unlike commercial power projects owned by outside shareholders, the cooperative model keeps much of the financial benefit in the local economy. Local contractors and suppliers were used for construction and ongoing work where possible. At the official opening, Parliamentary Secretary to the NSW Treasurer David Mehan MP praised the cooperative’s local economic impact. “The co-operative model has grounded this project in the region,” Mehan said. “It has anchored it ethically and in the way it has been delivered, from using local businesses to keeping benefits local. Around 80 per cent of profit remains in this community. Few renewable energy projects in NSW can say that. The co-operative model has made it possible here in Goulburn.” BCCM Chief Executive Melina Morrison also praised the long effort made by the local volunteers. “You started with an idea and now you own an energy asset,” Morrison told members. “You have walked together, showing together we are stronger.”
A working template for regional energy
Community Energy for Goulburn plans to remain an incorporated association and explore more renewable energy projects in the region. The separate cooperative board, elected by members, oversees the commercial operation of the solar farm and its battery. The four-megawatt-hour battery stores extra electricity produced during the day and can send that power into the grid later, when demand is higher. This allows the project to avoid relying as heavily on lower midday wholesale electricity prices. Peter Fraser explained in The Energy that the battery lets the project sell more power at times when prices are higher, usually in the afternoon. The project shows that a small regional community can raise money, build and manage complex grid infrastructure when it has enough time, commitment and a clear structure for ownership. For Goulburn, twelve years of volunteer meetings and community work have ended with a working clean-energy asset that sends electricity into the local grid.