Indigo Power has signed a Power Purchase Agreement with Hepburn Energy to purchase a share of the electricity exported from its community-owned wind farm and battery at Leonards Hill in central Victoria.
The partnership adds an important new source of renewable energy to the portfolio supporting Indigo Power retail. Our customers already export rooftop solar into the grid each day, while our growing fleet of community batteries gives us increasing access to community-owned generation and storage. Hepburn Energy now adds wind to that mix, alongside another significant battery.
An Australian community energy first
Hepburn Energy has a special place in Australia’s community energy story.
The project began in 2005 with a community effort to develop a locally owned renewable energy project. The Hepburn co-operative was incorporated in 2007 and, by 2011, more than 2,000 member-shareholders had come together to build Australia’s first community-owned wind farm. Its two turbines, Gale and Gusto, began generating that year.
More than 15 years later, Hepburn Energy remains a powerful example of what communities can achieve when they take an active role in the energy transition.
That shared history is part of what makes the partnership such a natural fit. Hepburn Energy and Indigo Power were both built around the same basic idea: communities should have a real stake in the energy transition and share in the value it creates.
“Hepburn Energy was built by community, for community, so partnering with another community-minded retailer is simply a natural fit, and we have been wanting to work together for years,” Hepburn Energy CEO Taryn Lane said.
“This agreement means the energy from Gale, Gusto and now Bessie is valued for what it is: local, renewable and increasingly flexible. It’s a great example of community energy organisations backing each other to build a fairer, cleaner energy system.”
Adding wind to the energy behind Indigo Power retail
Indigo Power already has seven operational community batteries across Victoria, providing just under 700 kW of power and around 2.4 MWh of storage. Five of those sites also include solar generation.
Our customers contribute another significant source of renewable generation through the rooftop solar they export into the grid every day.
Wind adds something different.
Solar generation is concentrated during daylight hours, particularly through the middle of the day. Wind follows the weather and can generate at quite different times, including overnight. Bringing wind into the portfolio therefore gives us a different generation profile alongside the solar already coming from our customers and community battery sites.
Battery storage gives us more flexibility again. Energy can be stored and supplied later rather than having to be exported at the time it is generated. Together, renewable generation from different sources and a growing amount of storage give us more options for managing the electricity behind our retail business.
At Leonards Hill, Gale and Gusto have a combined generation capacity of 4.1 MW. Sitting alongside them is Bessie, Hepburn Energy’s community battery, with 2 MW of power and approximately 5 MWh of storage.
Our agreement covers a share of the electricity exported from the site, including electricity generated by Gale and Gusto and electricity discharged from Bessie.
Like electricity from our community batteries and our customers’ rooftop solar, power from Hepburn’s site enters the shared electricity grid rather than travelling directly to an individual Indigo Power customer. The Power Purchase Agreement means those exports now form part of the portfolio we use to manage our retail business.
That has a practical commercial role. Electricity prices change substantially over the course of a day and across the year. Renewable generation with different production profiles gives us more diversity, while batteries allow us to shift energy through time. This gives us more tools to manage our exposure to the wholesale electricity market and support competitive retail pricing.
It also means that more of the renewable generation and storage supporting Indigo Power retail comes from community energy assets.
“We’ve always wanted Indigo Power retail to be backed by real renewable energy assets in the communities we serve. Our customers’ solar, our growing fleet of community batteries and now Hepburn Energy’s wind and battery give us a much more diverse mix of generation and storage behind the retail business”. Indigo Power Managing Director Ben McGowan said.
“That helps us manage the wholesale market more effectively while keeping more of the value of the energy transition in communities.”
Building from here
We want Indigo Power retail to be increasingly connected to real renewable generation and storage in the communities we serve. The Hepburn Energy agreement takes us another step in that direction.
As our community battery fleet grows and new community generation opportunities emerge, we’ll keep building the renewable energy portfolio behind our retail offer and looking for practical ways to keep more of the value created by the energy transition in communities.
Ben is Indigo Power’s Managing Director. He has a passion for collaborative initiatives that positively impact our communities. Ben leads our skilled and committed projects team, driving the uptake of community-scale clean energy technologies in communities around Australia.