Yackandandah energy group aims to support farmers to meet community goal

Totally Renewable Yackandandah (TRY) were named in the Community Power Agency's recent report for being part of a list of 55 community groups which raised about $87 million towards renewable energy projects.

The report, published on Wednesday, made eight recommendations and called on state and territory governments to unlock 100 megawatt of community energy projects within the next three years.

One of TRY's community projects included a recently-installed electric vehicle charging station, and a Yack01 battery - aimed at improving community resilience, particularly during bushfire season.

TRY and Indigo Power initially raised about $200,000, and received a further $171,000 in state government funding to install a 274kWh battery.

Juliette Milbank, Totally Renewable Yackandandah, said the group included about 80 members with a wide range of backgrounds from inner-town residents to farmers.

"Yackandandah is a small town with a population of about 1500-2000 people, and because it's close to Wodonga it has a real mixture," she said.

"It has an agricultural dairy and forestry history, and an old sawmill with a factory battery."

Ms Milbank said the group continued to investigate cost-effective ways of working towards the 100 per cent renewable energy goal.

"Lots of people on bigger properties and farms outside of town have water pumps, and of course during bushfire season they want to be able to run them even if the power goes down," she said.

"From some of the research we did, someone who puts a solar system in Yackandandah saves about 63 per cent on their power bills."

She said they hoped to talk to each community member and focus on resilience methods, after Yackandandah had been threatened by fires.

"Yackandandah only has one power line in so if it gets disrupted at any point along its length it completely loses power," she said.

"[The town] was also used as a staging area [during bushfires] for a lot of emergency and support teams going up to the Upper Murray.

"Making sure the town has good backup supplies is something we feel is really important and the community has indicated they feel it's important too."

Community Power Agency community director Kristy Walters said she found TRY's achievements, and its fellow groups listed in the report, remarkable.

"This is the low hanging fruit of decarbonising our grid," she said.

"Communities want to be involved in their own energy generation and the projects we have highlighted demonstrate how important this is for community buy-in."

"Community energy projects are vital to democratising our energy system and in the process they are enabling many other benefits at the local level."