As 2024 comes to an end, we wanted to once again thank you – our shareholders, customers, and supporters. Your commitment and support help us work towards our mission to build a society powered by 100% renewable energy.

Let’s take a moment to reflect on some of this year’s key milestones and share what’s coming in 2025.

Expanding clean energy access

Our electricity retail business took a major step forward this year, expanding our service offering across all of New South Wales and Victoria. Our product offer is also set to expand as we prepare to turn a major challenge caused by our unique customers into an opportunity.

Recognising the unique challenges of our solar-powered customer base, we’ve developed an innovative retail plan to incentivise energy use during peak solar production times. Most Indigo Power customers have installed rooftop solar systems that exceed their daytime energy needs. As a result, on sunny days, we find ourselves exporting energy to the National Electricity Market (NEM) – often having to pay the market operator for each kilowatt hour we supply to them.

Launching early in 2025, the ‘Energy Shapers’ plan will offer low-cost shared energy between 10 am and 3 pm daily. Our goal is to share more energy, adding to the energy sharing carried out by some of our shared assets, including our growing fleet of community batteries and the Upper Yarra Community Power’s 100kW hydro facility. 

Empowering communities through renewable projects

In 2024, we continued to deliver high-impact projects to support our customers and communities to access clean energy technologies:

Household Energy Upgrades: We helped thirty households cut costs and emissions with a simple timing switch applied to electric hot water and funding from Sustainability Victoria. Electric hot water systems are often the largest consumer of energy in a rural household, and with these hot water systems now switched to daytime charging – and our new electricity plan – these hot water switches will be cutting costs as well as emissions.

Energy Resilience Projects: We completed large energy resilience projects in Tumbarumba and Corryong, installing on-site solar and battery systems at over 45 sites critical for effective community response to bushfires.  These systems are now capable of providing substantial backup during power outages, ensuring that our communities remain resilient in times of need. 

Community batteries: leading the way

Community batteries were a standout achievement for Indigo Power this year.

Yarra Junction Community Battery: One of our most exciting achievements in the past year was the delivery of the Yarra Junction Community Battery, funded through the Federal Government’s Community Batteries for Household Solar grants program. Thanks to the proactive support from the Yarra Ranges Council we were quickly able to finalise a battery location in a council-owned car park selected as the ideal host site and the 120kW/300kWh battery has now been installed at the site and is awaiting commissioning early in the new year.

Wodonga Battery Initiative: We also received grant funding through the Victorian Government’s 100 Neighbourhood Battery program to install a community battery on North East Water (NEW) land in Wodonga. Our team has conducted a comprehensive inspection of potential sites, and a NEW pumping facility in Baranduda has been selected as the preferred site. As water utilities own land in strategic locations with excellent connections to the electricity network, this project aims to explore the integration of community-scale storage technologies alongside water distribution networks.

Yackandandah’s Second Community Battery (Yack02): In collaboration with TRY, we’re installing a 60kW solar PV system and a 60kW/200kWh community battery at the Yackandandah Sports Park. This facility is expected to provide low-cost power to users of the site and long-duration backup storage so that the community can use the site during extended power outages. Indigo Power’s Project Manager, Dena Schulz, is managing the installation, which is being carried out by KDEC Electrical & Solar. We’ve completed the installation of the new switchboard and the solar PV system. We expect the battery to be installed in the first quarter of 2025. The YACK02 project is funded by the Victorian Government’s 100 Neighbourhood Battery program. 

Laying the groundwork for future growth

Throughout the year, a major focus has been our detailed application to the Australian Renewable Energy Agency’s (ARENA) Community Batteries Funding Round 1. This ambitious project aims to deploy ten community batteries across nine sites in Victoria and one in New South Wales. This funding builds upon our commitment to supporting communities increasingly vulnerable to extended power outages caused by bushfires and other emergency events. The community batteries will be installed at critical community and emergency response sites in the region. The project will see 4.13 MWh of storage capacity and 680 kW of solar power installation.

The development of this fleet of community batteries greatly improves our ability to connect our customers to energy shared from local renewable sources.  Our analyst, Nick Mason-Smith is currently assessing options to optimise the use of our community batteries in support of our electricity retail business. 

In 2024 the Victorian Government’s Neighbourhood Battery Initiative funded Indigo Power to develop investment-ready business cases and site-specific project plans for community batteries at 24 local government sites. These ‘behind-the-meter’ community battery and solar systems are designed to support councils to deliver energy resilience outcomes for their communities.  Many of these sites have been submitted to the Victorian Government’s 100 Neighbourhood Battery grant program for delivery funding.

We believe that communities and community-scale clean energy technology have a vital role to play in the transition to Australia’s sustainable energy future and we’ll continue to find ways to support the delivery of household and community-scale clean energy technologies. 

Looking to 2025

Your support has been instrumental in achieving these milestones and we’re looking forward to celebrating some of them with you in 2025, starting with the launch of the Yarra Junction Community Battery early in the new year.

In the meantime, thank you for being part of our journey. Together, we’re building a brighter, cleaner future for all.

Wishing you a joyful holiday season and a happy 2025!