Commercial case study: Malmsbury Fire Station

Solar and Powerwall provide backup for a rural fire station in grid outages

Opportunity

During emergency events, like bushfires, it is common for the electricity grid to go down. This causes significant issues for regional communities’ communication systems, storage of medicines, food refrigeration and internet.

To help protect these services, Malmsbury Fire Station were searching for a solution that could provide backup power in the instance of a grid outage. With guaranteed backup power, the Fire Station would be able to keep critical operations running and provide shelter for those members of the community with no power.

Solution

Specialized Solar installed 10.54 kilowatts of solar and a Powerwall battery at Malmsbury Fire Station. The purchase of Powerwall was enabled through the Central Victorian Greenhouse Alliance (CVGA) solar bulk-buy program which helps install free solar and battery systems on community buildings and schools across the region.

Powerwall stores excess solar energy and ensures that backup power for Malmsbury Fire Station is delivered instantaneously when the grid goes down. Additionally, Powerwall helps lower power costs through access to renewable energy day and night, reducing reliance on the grid and decreasing the Station’s environmental footprint.

Results

Powerwall provides at least one full day of power autonomy in the event of an outage. Depending on weather conditions, the system can run indefinitely whilst the grid is down.

With backup power, Malmsbury Fire Station can continue to run critical operations like communications and internet, while providing a shelter with power to the community of Malmsbury.