Katie Allen (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just last week the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction, Angus Taylor, announced our government's support for an incredibly important trial on energy microgrids in my home state of Victoria. The project is a distributed energy resources marketplace trial which will enable households and businesses to buy and sell electricity and grid services through the wholesale energy market. The trial, by Project Edge, will create a real-life marketplace that will see businesses and residents able to essentially buy and sell the sunshine they capture on their rooftops. This is the way of the future, and it is something all Australian should care about. The trial will initially involve 50 houses and scale up to around 1,000 commercial, residential and industry electricity customers. This will help reduce electricity costs and manage challenges associated with a decentralised grid. Locally, in my electorate of Higgins, I was proud to support St John's Church in Toorak and the Malvern Bowling Club, who received an Energy Efficient Communities grant to help with energy saving projects like the installation of solar panels on their buildings. These panels will result in approximately 17.8 megawatt hours of carbon-free electricity each year, offsetting about 14 tonnes of emissions annually. How fantastic that these organisations can save on their bills, help lower emissions to help protect the future of the planet and, hopefully, one day be able to buy and sell our country's sunshine asset into the market place.