When the lights go out: The households in the Dandenongs staying online thanks to batteries

Dandenong Ranges locals are preparing to stay online during bushfires or storms by installing home batteries, as families wait with bated breath to see when the next storm or fire hits.

🌬️ High frequency: Mount Dandenong locals have been dealing with the impacts of severe storms for years, including being cut off from power and internet for weeks on end and having key exit routes cut off.

• A major south-westerly gust exceeding 100 kilometres per hour in June 2021 caused widespread outages, leaving more than 3,000 homes without power and internet for more than a month.

💲 What’s the cost? The erratic weather destroyed 71 homes, damaged 129 properties to the point where they were uninhabitable, forced families from 120 households to seek temporary accommodation and closed eight schools.

• Hundreds of roads were blocked for months, with full recovery taking more than two years to complete. Mount Dandenong’s William Ricketts Sanctuary still remains closed almost five years on.

• The financial toll of the event stretched into the tens of millions of dollars, including more than $51 million from the State Government to impacted community members.

😟 No rest: Severe weather conditions have continued to hit the region over the last five years, including destructive squalls in October 2021, June 2022 and February 2024, with the latter leaving 530,000 households and businesses across the state without power.

🏠 Local impacts: Upwey homeowner and Repower the Dandenongs secretary Daniel Wurm said he and his family had to endure power outages ranging from 10 minutes to six hours at least once a month before he installed a battery a month ago.

• 🗣️ “During the month of February, it went off five times in one week,” Wurm told the Eastern Melburnian. “Everybody’s sick of it. Due to climate change, freak storms are becoming more and more frequent.”

⚡ A backup plan: Wurm said he was about to buy a generator to power his all-electric home when he heard about the Federal Government’s Cheaper Home Batteries Program.

• 🗣️“I've been able to back up my entire house with a battery,” said Wurm. “The very first day after we got it installed, the power went off, and we just flipped the switch and we were the only people in the street that had power.”

⛈️ Unpredictable conditions: Dr Milton Speer, a meteorologist from the University of Technology in Sydney, said rising temperatures caused by climate change have pushed storm conditions further south and made them more erratic.

💰 Forward investments: 68-year-old Ringwood East homeowner Les Corbett said he installed a battery to support his home’s solar system about six months ago.

• “It’s better off not relying on anyone else and being self-sufficient,” Corbett told the Eastern Melburnian.

📈 A growing need: Green energy supplier Buffalo Stand-Alone Power Solutions entered the scene only two years ago, but founder Rob Oakley said the “appetite is growing” for energy resilience options.

• 🗣️“We’re so reliant on electricity and the internet for our day-to-day lives,” Oakley told the Eastern Melburnian. “Energy resilience is diversifying and preparing for the worst.”

⏭️ What’s next? Founder and chief executive of energy policy advisory firm Nexa Advisory Stephanie Bashir said there needed to be more government investment in systems that can withstand extreme weather conditions.

• 🗣️ “The reality is we don’t need more investment in poles and wires,” Bashir told the Eastern Melburnian. "We’ve got to be very careful that there’s not overspending on the wrong thing.”