Five community groups will join a new incubator next year to help them get dreams of local solar and battery projects off the ground.
The Community Power Agency is setting up the mentorship and investment program, seeding each group with an initial $10,000, to help them pass the wall of regulatory, financial, and knowledge obstacles.
The plan is to get more projects from early concept to investment readiness, the organisation says.
“Community groups are competing in a system built for big energy players, yet there’s huge momentum and demand from communities to participate in renewables themselves,” said Community Power Agency director Kim Mallee in a statement.
She says these kinds of projects use the “missing middle” of the distribution network, the owners of which have long been saying could easily stand in place of building more transmission, and give communities ownership thereby delivering more social acceptance of these technologies.
The issue is that while there are federal and state incentives for big projects and for household energy, there is no help to navigate grid connections, financing, and development for 1-30 megawatt (MW) projects, Mallee told One Step Off The Grid.
“To be able to translate the complexity of a mid-scale solar connection process and the development and financing process to community groups that want to have agency over their energy future, that’s not being done in Australia yet. It’s bridging that gap of knowledge,” she says.
Furthermore, community projects are driven by volunteers – smart, skilled people, but who need help navigating the world of energy project development.
“That is something we’re trying to help solve, by growing the capacity of those volunteer community groups,” she says.
“If we can in a very conscious and methodical way move these community groups through a training program where they can be given all of this complex info in an accessible, digestible way, it will rapidly improve their success of engaging with the grid connection process, the finance industry, the development industry.
“They’ll understand the right questions to ask and they’ll be able to see that pathway from A through to Z.”
The 14-month incubation period from March next year will involve capacity building on project development, governance, financial modelling and investor engagement, before aggregating the projects into a portfolio to attract a mix of debt finance and investment funding.
The incubator will also connect the groups with investors, corporate offtakers, and funders who are interested in working with communities.
The deadline for expressions of interest to join is 16 January 2026.
Unlike the neighbourhood batteries, owned by network companies, which controversially gained access to the federal community batteries fund, the incubator defines “community projects” as those started, led and owned by locals and those where the community has a legal or financial stake.
Bigger than you think
Community power projects, as evidenced by the 50 groups helped by the Community Power Agency since 2011, are a feature of Australia’s regions that have been bubbling away for many years.
In 2023, the Community Energy Collective Impact report found projects by 55 community groups produced enough renewable energy in a year to power 2800 households, or remove the equivalent emissions from 7700 cars.
The Haystacks Solar Garden, backed by the Grong Grong solar farm and driven in part by Mallee, went from idea to ‘harvest’ in just four years, delivering 175 shareholders electricity bill credits in 2024.
Totally Renewable Yackandandah has been one of the most successful, establishing microgrids, helping locals install rooftop solar, setting up a virtual power plant, and backing in two community batteries.
In the small coastal Western Australian town of Denmark, the community wants to double the size of its locally-owned wind farm and add a battery.
Hepburn Wind was the first community-owned wind project, and is now looking to add solar and a battery to its array.
In Ballarat, they’re going even further, testing how they might set up a community-owned network.
For all of the success stories are the others that show how challenging it can be to go it alone.
The Victorian town of Newstead, which took 16 years to switch on their small solar and battery project and had to outsource the build and operation to Flow Power.
In Noosa, Queensland, community group Zero Emissions Noosa won a federal grant for a Community Battery but was hit with a $6,500 Storage Network Tariff by network owner – and community battery competitor – Energy Queensland, significantly affecting the financial viability.
