<
https://reneweconomy.com.au/the-wheels-fell-off-farmer-tells-senate-how-misinformation-killed-a-community-battery-project/>
"At this week’s Senate inquiry into information integrity on climate and
energy, a local farmer and renewable-energy advocate told Senators how
misinformation has derailed a fully funded, community-backed battery project
for the town of Narrabri in north-west NSW.
Sally Hunter, a farmer and community leader who co-founded the non-profit
Geni.Energy, said false and exaggerated claims about battery safety and
performance had destroyed years of work and wasted hundreds of thousands of
taxpayer and ratepayer dollars.
“Despite strong community support, this project has been derailed because of
the spread of false and exaggerated information,” Hunter told the committee.
Geni.Energy secured $500,000 in federal funding under the Community Batteries
for Household Solar program to build a 500 kWh community battery in Narrabri’s
town centre. The local council initially voted unanimously to support the
project, providing a letter of endorsement and a memorandum of understanding.
Council also directed the group to use an appropriate site for the battery – a
car park already designated as a renewable-energy hub – and prepared a
construction certificate for it.
But midway through lease negotiations, the council reversed course. “It was at
this point that the wheels fell off,” Hunter said. Council blocked the staff
from finalising the rental agreement, which “was enough to kill the project.”
Hunter said she could not say who convinced the council to reverse the project
but told Senators, “what occurred was not due process, and it was certainly not
based on fact.”
The false claims made by council included wild exaggerations about fire risks
and outages. “At one council meeting, it was compared with a grid-scale battery
900 times larger for how long it would burn for,” she said.
“There was a total lack of comparative risk analysis with other technologies in
our community that we live with every day.”
Councillors claimed the battery could blow up, catch fire all the time and
might shut down the town for seven days, Hunter said. Local Facebook pages,
she added, became “the castle of propagated misinformation,” while a fake
account, “Joey Perth”, was used “deliberately to deceive people.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
