This is part two of a two part series on how a small town in Victoria has become resilient through going electric. This episode, SBS looks at how the project has evolved and how other regional communities can stand to benefit from the rollout of renewables.
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TRANSCRIPT
In part one of this two-part series, SBS looked at how Yackandandah, a small town in northern Victoria, has taken control of its energy.
One community building benefitting from the renewable project in Yackandandah is the local retirement village.
Taking us to see their recently installed battery is Blake Edwards.
"So, Blake Edwards, current president of Totally Renewable Yackandandah."
Raised in Albury, Blake studied aerospace engineering in Melbourne before deciding to settle in Yack.
"Really, I'm more technical motivated, and at the moment, that's the application of all this cool tech that I need to be careful not to just be... You don't want to just be advocating for tech for the sake of cool tech. Yeah. But to me, it's like, wow, this is this huge opportunity where a lot of this tech, when applied right, ends up converting to quality of life, saving on your bills, thriving rural communities."
For a community of around 2000 people, he says up to 12 million dollars can be spent each year on fuel.
"Geez, if a community that small could even just retain a couple of million from that pool and just keep it recirculating locally, that's massive. Yeah. Imagine what we could do with that. Yeah. That's probably my motivation."
At the local retirement village, Blake says some residents were avoiding using electricity, sometimes going cold just to save on their energy bills.
To better understand their situation, he says TRY volunteers sat down with residents one on one to figure out how better energy systems could be tailored to their needs.
"We ended up speaking with the majority of them. And that might've been sitting down for half an hour, in some cases it was a few hours. Yeah. Like a few cups of tea to talk about any comfort issues that they have. So not just going in hell-bent on thinking we need to save them on their bills or we know what they need, but just asking, are they comfortable, are they warm, do they have any sort of energy-related equipment or maintenance issues? And that process of just going through one by one was absolutely just fantastic."
Regardless of their interest in climate action, people are increasingly pessimistic about the impact they can make when governments and big corporations lack the ambition to take meaningful change.
For many though, the switch is not about climate ambition, it's about survival.
"I guess communities like us, we're just doing this because we have to. Because if we don't get control of some of these assets and go in and help these households and give the advice as needed now, it's not really an option to wait a few years because all of a sudden you'll look back and there'll be all these externally owned assets everywhere. Like it's a bit of a land grab. With these kind of community batteries and these public assets, there's a land grab going on at the moment, and if we don't do it or if we don't butt in and try and have a say, it's going to be too late for a lot of sites and a lot of suburbs and whatnot."
Recent polling shows that regional opposition to renewables is far less common than people think.
Yackandandah sits in the federal electorate of Indi, currently represented by Independent Helen Haines.
Without engagement, Dr Haines says regional communities cannot be expected to blindly welcome major renewable projects.
"These are communities who want fair warning, fair process, and fair, intergenerational community benefit from projects. Their demands for meaningful engagement should not be contorted into blanket opposition. Because there is support. Recent polling shows strong support for the transition to renewable energy across regional Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales."
In a March 2026 survey of around 2000 people living in designated regional Renewable Energy Zones in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, 63 per cent of people supported the transition.
However, 33 per cent of respondents believed that the majority of people in their area did not support the transition, showing a significant gap between real and perceived support.
"My advice to any of those communities is that it's a huge opportunity. There's always, in many cases, some enormous upsides to be found, and most of that's financial. These companies are absolutely pouring funding into these communities. So I would just encourage these communities to first ask, "What's in it for us?" And really fight for themselves and really get to the bottom of, "Okay, X, Y, Z company, what are you going to do for us? We're not going to love having wind turbines on the horizon. Clearly, you are going to have to make it worth our while." And in many cases, it seems there's an enormous amount of funding available, so that could completely transform some communities."
As well as funding from the petrol station and grants from the Victoria government, Totally Renewable Yackandandah has received funding from a group called Rewiring Australia.
After spending two decades in the United States, where he helped write the countries biggest climate policy, Rewiring Australia founder Saul Griffith returned to Australia where he's leading a similar electrification project in his own area around Wollongong.
"What we've learned so far actually is that this is a big cultural and social project. So people don't trust the internet a lot, they don't trust the government a lot, but they do trust their neighbors. And so the fact that neighbors are showing neighbors how to save money and save the planet at the same time, is the secret sauce. And we're also learning what the little difficulties are about certain types of houses that are a little more expensive to retrofit, et cetera. How to streamline the local tradies so that they know how to do the work, and they know how to do it well. And so what we're learning is less technical than we might have expected, although it's leading to a few technical projects, and it's more social, cultural, and about how people take action and how people make change. "
The Northern Territory is considered one of the best places in Australia, if not the world, to build solar projects.
"So I'm Chantelle Johns. I'm the community coordinator based here in Marlinja for Original Power."
In Marlinja, like a lot of regional Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, power is not supplied through a traditional energy grid.
"So the community here, like all other communities, got put on mandated prepaid meters. Now we have the smart meter. So essentially, you're buying prepaid power, similar to a phone credit type of situation. You go to the local shop, you purchase your power, and you come back on, and it's on your meter. Now with that comes a lot of disconnections, because we're on the end of a feeder line from Elliott. So [sighs] it's not that reliable."
Depending on the season, some families in Marlinja were paying up $200 a week on electricity.
"We would experience major disconnections all the time, just from the line, but also from people running out of money to put on their meters. And when the community in itself, the whole community would black out, it also caused the water as well. So it wasn't just a power thing, it was a power and water issue. And because of that, we had plenty of times where we would disconnect power for days, which also meant water would be off, all sorts of things. And by being on the end of a, it's 25-kilometer line, anything could disrupt that line, from birds or bats or whatever."
But in around 2019, the community decided to take action and invited the community focused Aboriginal organisation Original Power to help them find a solution.
It took years of back and forth with retailers and the housing department and the Northern Land Council.
"We don't want to ruin country. We want something that's going to be here for ages, that's going to benefit everybody." And so what that looks like. So we started all of that with Original Power's help and guidance through everything. And yeah, what should've been six months to 12 months sort of thing was about five years by breaking down, yeah, all those barriers."
Then, in 2024, Marlinja became home to Australia’s first First Nations-owned solar microgrid.
Residents there now save up to 70 per cent on energy, and Chantelle says the work isn't done yet.
"From the project, we're now going into energy efficiency. So we've just completed 65 split system air con installs throughout all the homes here in Marlinja with more to come. So it's not just initially saving money on power, but it's also opened up this world of being able to up-skill for jobs and all this sort of stuff. And because it's a community-owned project, we need a community-run entity to take on that ownership."
With similar projects now underway in other remote communities, Chantelle says keeping community at the heart of it is vital for success.
"If it's not community-led, I say to other companies, "Good luck trying to get this stuff done," because you don't know who you need to talk to, where you got to go, all that sort of stuff. But when it's come from community, it's from the people that own that area already. So you've already got the interest, you've got the right people, and it really just is smooth sailing."
Places like Marlinja and Yackandandah are unique, but they're not alone.
With renewable communities popping up all across the country and the world, Matt says that adaptation requires creativity and understanding what it is that a community needs to thrive.
''We're under no illusion that that's going to be the same in every other town. And there are a sequence of totally renewable towns across Australia. We've not set out to kind of brand that or claim ownership of that at all. There are well over 100 towns across Australia focused on the questions of renewable energy as a community, and each community will have different resolutions to what they need to do."
Rooftop by rooftop, community by community, Russell says every change made is a valuable step.
"And just by getting little people like myself to do this sort of thing and sort of try and spread it a bit, and maybe a friend of mine or I sell one to someone, and someone else goes for a drive in it and they think, "Oh, these aren't so bad," it might sort of help spread the word. This will not fix the world, but it is a stepping stone, and that's why I do it."
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