DRREA (local renewable energy) News

Solar Savers Expo
On Sunday January 21 between 9am and 3pm. DRREA will host this expo as
part of the Emerald Market. The expo will be held in the car park behind
the Community House Hall. It is aimed at people interested in reducing
their power bills by installing solar and BATTERIES.

Hazelwood's inside story
Our first forum for 2018 will be on Monday February 12 at Emerald Library
at 7.30 pm. Engineer and former La Trobe Valley insider Dave O'Neil will
present on the real story of Australia's ageing power plants like
Hazelwood and Liddel.

Maxi Supermarket goes solar!
We were recently walking down from One Tree Hill.  We reached the view of
Upper Fern Tree Gully my wife Marion noticed a large number of solar
panels on a large roof top that were new. We soon realised we were looking
at Maxi Supermarket.

Next time I was shopping there I asked the duty manager about them. It
seems they were installed by the body corporate that runs the shopping
centre and that it was an economic decision to reduce power bills. We hope
to work with the body corporate to publicise the installation through the
local media. Hopefully this will encourage other local businesses to
install solar.

Solar in Gembrook
On December 23 I visited the newsagency and the IGA  supermarket in
Gembrook both of which had installed solar. I delivered to each a
'Community Leadership' certificate which honours them for taking a
leadership role on clean energy in their community.

Talking to Andrew, the IGA proprietor he walked me through the ap on his
phone which allows him to remotely monitor the systems performance. For a
Luddite like me it seemed very user friendly   and easy to read. It showed
 that on the previous day, Friday December22, which was fine and sunny it
generated 26 % of his power needs. He said he was on target to reach his 5
year payback.
Across the road Anne at the news agency said her solar system “was
performing well and was paying itself off gradually”. She said she reads
her inverter.