Fair, Clean, Local Energy For All of Us. Solar Harvest’s aim is to provide our regional communities, that is the Barossa, Adelaide Plains and northern Adelaide, with access to fair, clean and local energy. Solar Harvest Community Energy Cooperative is a regional, community-owned, renewable energy co-operative.
We aim to provide regional communities with access to fair, clean and locally produced energy. Having a co-operative structure ensures that local people will always have a say in how the business operates. It ensures that decisions will be made for the benefit of the broader communities in which we live.
• Clean energy will be produced without any deleterious effects on our environment.
• Energy will be produced as close to the user as possible thus reducing transmission losses.
• The economic benefits stay within the local community.
How will we achieve this purpose?
• Solar panels will be purchased and installed on the roofs of small, locally owned businesses and/or community based service organisations. Participating businesses and organisations will have reduced power bills bringing economic and social benefits to the region. Co-operative members will be rewarded by modest returns on their investment.
• Once a number of projects are underway, there may be scope to look at extending the program to include residential housing or other programs.
• Community awareness and access to reliable, clean energy options will be enhanced by advice and information available through the Co-operative. (sourced 15/4/2023 from website https://www.solarharvest.coop/)
Our Story
The Solar Harvest Community Energy Co-operative has been borne out of the reality that things are changing dramatically in the electricity supply arena. The technologies that produce and deliver electricity to our homes and businesses are changing rapidly. Power grids designed for a one way, predictable flow over long distances from centralised power stations to consumers now have to cope with variable flows in both directions as variable power production from large and small photovoltaic systems and wind turbines push energy into the grid at many locations. New technologies usually lead to new opportunities. The novel problems thrown up by the growth in variable power sources are being met with novel solutions: battery and other forms of storage; demand management controlled remotely to prevent the whole grid being overloaded; household and industrial scale devices to enable trading electricity and monitoring real-time power use and production. Solar Harvest recognises the opportunity to involve local community members to actively participate in the production of electrical power and to ensure that they have a say in its distribution.
Values and Principles
Solar Harvest Community Energy Co-operative will
• work towards ensuring equity and fairness in energy access
• engage the community in the energy revolution that is already underway
• will become a trusted source of impartial information on energy technologies
• will take advantage of innovation for the benefit of the community
• and enable the community to ‘connect’ with energy issues as they develop.
Solar Harvest Community Energy Co-operative intends to be known within the local community as
• providing an ideal investment vehicle for clean energy investment
• effective outcomes
• working for the common good
• supportive of other community energy projects
It is expected that members of Solar Harvest will share many of the following motivations:
• having a passion for community involvement and enabling community change from within
• happy to be innovative and entrepreneurial
• wanting change for the sake of our communities’ future well-being
• seeing the decentralisation of the energy industry
• empowering people to have a say on their energy future
• providing a vehicle for local people to invest in renewable energy
• caring for the planet and sensing an urgency for change.