Engaging the Broome community on a proposed community battery project

The primary purpose of the Broome Community Battery is to develop a scalable, transferable product that widens community access to renewable energy and storage. The community are otherwise unable to participate in distributed energy resources (DER) to reduce their energy bills.In considering the social acceptance of a community battery in Broome, it is important to ensure that there is sufficient alignment between Horizon power and Broome residents in terms of what problem the battery is solving. For Horizon power, the community battery can increase hosting capacity and help make the grid more resilient. It is also likely to be important to the community that the benefits of the battery could be shared across the community. Ultimately, the community battery is most likely to gain community ownership if it is designed so that both solar and non-solar owners benefit.