Renewable power options enabled by Local Electricity Trading.

The paper is prepared as part of an Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) funded research project led by the Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF) at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Facilitating Local Network Charges and Virtual Net Metering and a project funded by the Victorian Government Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP), Virtual Renewable Power Stations. A key task in the ISF project is to run five virtual trials of Local Electricity Trading (LET)1 and local network charges, one of which will take place in the Moira Shire and Swan Hill Rural City Council areas in regional Victoria. The Moira and Swan Hill trial will examine either the business model for a one-to-many (Community Power Station) or for a many-to-one (also called a Virtual Power Station, or VPS). Both of these models are likely to be enabled if Local Electricity Trading becomes commonly available. The primary interest of the Councils is to improve the resilience of the local economy by retaining energy spending within the area, to increase the capacity of local renewable energy generation and to enable local residents and businesses to participate in the renewable energy generation. The purpose of this paper is to assist the Councils to choose which model to take forward into a trial