Matthew Charles-Jones, TRY Chairperson, was recently interviewed for an article on three Victorian community’s efforts to power up in different ways: the communities were Yackandandah, Hepburn Shire, Preston in Melbourne, and two residents outside Mallacoota. You can read the article by clicking on the image or the link below.
Check out the shots of Matt on the roof of the Yack Public Hall with the solar array that was installed as part of the Virtual Power Plant (VPP), one of TRY’s signature projects to install solar and/or batteries on all the public buildings in the town. The final two installations in that project are due to occur later this year.
Excerpt of the Royal Auto article showing Shannon Morris’ photo of Taryn Lane in front of one of the Hepburn Wind turbines, just outside Daylesford.
TRY’s chair Matt Charles-Jones was a guest on ABC Radio Melbourne’s The Conversation Hour yesterday, discussing grid reliability and energy options with Warwick Long. He appeared alongside Tony Wood (Grattan Institute) and Simon Holmes à Court (a senior advisor to the Climate and Energy College at Melbourne University and on the board of the Smart Energy Council).
Matthew Charles-Jones talking at a workshop in Benalla in 2018. Photo: TRY
This episode of The Conversation Hour was prompted by the Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO’s) call for investment in the energy grid to stay reliable and avoid major blackouts, amid the increasing stresses of changing climate on both the grid and some industries.
Matt discussed TRY’s plans to rethink the way a community gets its energy, to trade, share and generate electricity locally via Indigo Power and the Ubi smart energy controller, as well as our plan to reach 100% renewable energy by 2022.
Unfortunately, the slot was too short to mention TRY’s current project looking at scaling up energy storage via the recent federal grant from the Regional and Remote Communities Reliability Fund. Over the next 15 months we’ll be investigating both pumped hydro and community-scale battery storage options to help us reach 100%, which is a big part of both reaching that goal and providing reliability both generally and during times of crisis.
You can listen to the episode here (the first ten minutes are taken by a Victorian Pandemic update):
Matt’s portion starts at the 36 minute mark and goes for 5 minutes. But it’s well worth also listening to the portions containing both Tony Wood (starts at the 19 minute mark) and Simon Holmes à Court (41 minute mark), as they bring pragmatic and knowledgeable perspectives to the energy debate.
