Mt Roskill Library and the adjoining Fickling Convention Centre will get a renewable energy boost thanks to central government’s Community Renewable Energy Fund.
The Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment grant will cover costs to purchase and install solar panels and a battery system.
It is part of an initiative to support government efforts to build energy resilience in communities and trial ways to store and distribute locally generated electricity.
Puketāpapa Local Board chair Ella Kumar is rapt with the assistance.
“We are thrilled to be receiving this grant as it really backs our objectives to be climate-resilient to support our community in environmentally sustainable ways,” she says.
“Our local library and the Fickling Community Centre are two cherished facilities in our area and has been well looked after by council staff, so we are very proud that it has been identified as a potential community resilience site and is suitable for innovation that will reduce our carbon footprint.
“Community facilities are an important element of creating healthy communities, but with increasing financial challenges, it can be difficult to prioritise what we can afford to build, maintain and run.
“This government grant will significantly help and provides us with a much-needed opportunity to update our facilities and will also increase resilience for our community when it’s needed.”
The purpose of the system is to maintain power in the building when there’s an outage on the national grid, including in civil emergency and natural disaster events.
The solar system is comprised of 90 solar panels that range between 10kW and 30kW and 16 batteries between 10kWh to 30kWh to store electricity.
Before the panels can be installed, roofing maintenance is underway, including installation of new roof membrane to ensure the roof’s usable life span is extended to match the life of the solar panels. The new system will be fully installed by October 2024.
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