Goulburn’s 300 local investors funded a 1.4MW solar farm and 4MWh battery over 12 years

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 initiativeThe 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, re...