What is a Community Energy Zone: This is an aggregation of renewable energy generation and distribution at a community level to create a Community Energy Zone.
Community Energy Zones are modern day power stations. They combine renewable energy generation such as wind and solar, storage such as batteries, high voltage poles and wires to deliver energy to the homes, businesses and industries that need it. By connecting multiple generators and storage in the same location, these energy zones capitalize on economies of scale to deliver cheap, reliable and clean electricity.
The Community Energy Zones are expected to deliver multiple benefits including:
● More reliable energy from significant amounts of new energy supply
● Energy bill savings from reduced wholesale electricity costs
● Emissions reduction from a cleaner energy sector
● Community partnership from strategic planning and best practice engagement
● Community benefit sharing
● Providing numerous potential opportunities for many communities members
● Potential to stabilize the local distribution grid reducing the potential large
infrastructure costs for utilities.
There are of course a range of social, economic and governance barriers for community energy zones to prosper.
