Manilla solar project backers on high after dinner, speech

The Manilla 100-Mile Night showcased local food and local power on Friday, with a talk from Melbourne University’s Energy Transition Hub senior adviser Simon Holmes à Court.

One organiser, Manilla Community Renewable Energy president Emma Stilts, said the goal for the town to be energy self-sufficient “seems more achievable now”.

“We’re at a time of high energy at the moment, because it does all seem to be working out – [we have] momentum,” she said.

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The group has been working for years to set up a community-owned energy company and is now taking expressions of interest from people with land suitable for a solar farm.

Ms Stilts said it had been a “ridiculously complicated” process, but she would not be “beaten by bureaucracy”.

Mr Holmes à Court’s message for Manilla residents was that they had “a lot going for them” and it was worth the effort.

He spoke of his experience with a company that established Australia’s first community-owned wind farm near Melbourne.

He told the Leader: “The Manilla community is where our community was a decade ago: a good idea, a lot of passion and trying to work out the first steps.”

“The talent and the goodwill around the project felt a lot like what we enjoyed early on,” he said.

“It is very complicated … but as the project became more and more real, it attracted all sorts of skill sets from the community.

“We found an engineer who understood wind turbines; we found people who understood the legals of forming a co-operative and raising money; we found lots of people in industry who really wanted our project to succeed and gave us a hand.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Emma and Robin [Gunning, group secretary] go down the same track.

“As the project becomes more real, more talent will be flushed out in the community.

“There’s a substation, there’s good land and there’s great sunlight, so I think they’ve got a lot going for them.”

Ms Stilts said: “I’ve been talking about this for a very long time, but I refuse to be beaten by bureaucracy.”

“If you own your local energy infrastructure that pays you every day of the year … then local communities are stronger and more resilient in the years to come.”