Transcript for First Peoples’ Solar and Storage Initiative video

First Peoples’ Solar and Storage Initiative information session transcript

[Speaker: John Griffiths]

There we go.

Afternoon, everyone.

Thank you very much for joining us.

We're just giving it another couple of moments to allow folks to join today's briefing session.

All righty.

I think we've got got quite a few people that have joined now.

I'm sure we'll have a few more that will filter in over the next couple of minutes, but we might get underway.

So thank you everyone for joining today's briefing on the first People's Solar and Storage Initiative.

My name's John Griffiths, I'm Senior Programme Manager in the Energy Programs branch at DEECA and joined today by my colleague Ryan Martin.

And we've got an an hour today to talk to you about this new grant funding opportunity for First People's organisations. Just to run through a little bit of housekeeping and how today's briefing will work.

You'll notice that there's a Q and A button at the top in your menu bar in Microsoft Teams.

If you've got any questions as we go through the slides, please start to pop them in that Q&A section and we'll have time at the end of the presentation to answer some of your questions today.

If we run out of time to answer everything, we'll definitely respond and get back to you and make sure all of the questions are answered.

Even if we run out of time in the session. We are going to provide a bit of an overview of the program, where it's come from and some of the parameters of the funding opportunity.

We'll also spend a bit of time just stepping through the grant application process, how our portal works, what the forms look like that you'll be required to fill in if applying for the grant.

And then towards the end of the session, we'll run you through the timelines for application and our process and then as I said, time for questions and answers at the end.

One last thing to flag in terms of housekeeping, we are recording today's session.

So if you I'm not happy with your question being recorded, suggests that you email it through to us and we'll pop an email address in the box in the chat for later as well.

Might be the best way if you don't want to ask the question in a recorded session.

So before we get into the session itself, I would like to begin by acknowledging that we're all meeting today on Aboriginal land, wherever you may be in Victoria or beyond.

I'm joining you from the unceeded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung People of the Eastern Kulin and pay my respect to their elders past and present, and to any First Peoples on the call with us today.

Our little team here at DEECA is part of the Consumer Community and First People's Energy Transition branch, so we're focused on partnering with First People's and looking for opportunities for self determination as part of the energy transition.

There's a lot going on and there's a lot of opportunities and a lot of challenges that we're facing collectively in this energy transition.

And professionally as a team, we're pretty focused on this.

And personally, I'm, I'm committed to reconciliation and, and feel privileged to be working on this program because it's an exciting one that's, you know, providing growth and learning opportunities for, for me and others in DEECA and great opportunities to work with your organisations and other First People's in Victoria on energy projects that can be driven by First People's.

Thanks Reahan.

So the, the first People solar and storage initiative, we thought it would be useful to provide a little bit of context as to where this has come from.

So our team's been running the 100 Neighbourhood Batteries Program for a couple of years now.

We've run 2 funding rounds under that program that's open to all sorts of organisations, community groups, energy companies, local councils and one thing that we have noted through that general program is that we haven't had a strong interest from Registered Aboriginal Parties, Aboriginal community controlled organisations and others.

So we were looking for ways to improve the accessibility for First People's organisations with this program and ways that we could tailor it to meet some of the needs of First People's organisations and make these kinds of projects that we know provide real benefit to First Peoples.

Aligned with my earlier comment around our commitment to self determination in the energy transition.

So we have actually also partnered with the Australian government on this.

Taking the funding that we had available through the 100 Neighbourhood Batteries program, combining it with some Commonwealth money around solar to provide this dedicated pool of funding to First People's organisations through the two streams, which I'll talk through in a moment, that provides funding from Victoria and the Commonwealth government with sort of no additional co-funding contributions required from applicants.

So the other thing about this particular initiative that's slightly new for us as well is that we've designed it to comprise of two streams, the first stream for Registered Aboriginal Parties, noting the, you know, rights that they have as recognised traditional owners within Victoria.

A non competitive grant is being offered to those organisations.

But we also wanted to recognise the really valuable and important role that Aboriginal community controlled organisations and others play in Victorian Aboriginal communities.

So have included this stream to for hopefully those of you that are on the call today, the organisations that that you represent and that you work with.

So the eligibility requirements essentially to be based in Victoria as you might expect to have an Australian business number an ABN.

But if you're if you don't, you can also look at options to work with a partner organisation that might auspice your group to put in a funding application and manage the project on your behalf.

And beyond that really it's is open to not-for-profit First People's organisations and those that we had in mind are are listed on the slide there.

So with that, just to to touch broadly on what's available through this program before range steps you through some of the detail, it's up to $700,000 for projects that include solar and solar PV and battery storage.

You can apply for projects that just have one or the other, which brings down the the funding cap to $350,000.

If you're just doing battery storage or just doing solar. Note that it's up to $700,000.

Obviously you don't need to have a project that being all the way up to the funding cap and we will assess all applications on a sort of value for money basis looking at the the scope and size of the project that you'd like to deliver relative to the funding ask.

The only other I suppose limitation really is on the battery size that has to be installed or that the main other I suppose consideration is battery size.

So a minimum of 20 kilowatts, 40 kilowatt hours and maximum 5 megawatts 20 MW hours.

And that's a really broad range.

That's the, at the smaller end we're talking equivalent to a few household size batteries and at the large end we're talking, you know, sort of shipping containers worth of batteries and most of the projects that we've seen through our main funding program much closer to the smaller end of that scale.

And you know, a size depending on what you're trying to achieve with the project and what sort of the site is.

And hopefully some of the examples and explanations that Reahan will give you shortly will help put some of that in context for you.

Last couple of things to note.

Applications opened yesterday.

So perhaps you've already seen that on the website and close on the 19th of May and projects must be finished, the solar installed, the battery installed, all wrapped up by December 2026.

So with that, I might hand over to you Reahan to go into a bit more detail for everyone.

[Speaker Reahan Martin]

Appreciate it, John.

Thank you and hi everyone.

I'm Reahan and I'm a programme manager and the new energy innovation team that works under John.

I'm also coming from the lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people in our offices in Narm.

So as John said, I'll cover the types of projects or provide some examples and then we'll go through some of the application form just to cover off any questions that might be there.

And then we'll have a Question Time.

So as you can see, there's a list here of the types of projects that come from our application guidelines and they can be an either behind the metre battery or front of metre battery, just a for behind the metre systems are essentially ones that you know, are on a property on maybe a building, kind of a normal, most common style of installation, similar to a household behind your smart metre that connects to the network and then the front of metre batteries in front of that smart metre.

So on the network side connects to the grid directly.

Often more complex projects and can be to solve network issues such as voltage issues in the neighbourhood or maybe some installations that are recurring, occurring rurally that might have a long line.

So instead of a long line, we put a battery in or they could be used to trade on the energy market, which kind of is similar to the type of project that is listed at dot point 2.

So the projects and partnerships with energy retailers can be either behind or front of metre systems with an energy retailer that would own a portion of the battery and then provide revenue to the grant applicant who would own the system and then pass on those savings to community depending on your organisational type.

And there are versions that are probably with larger scale batteries that can provide retailer arrangements to community as well.

Energy backup systems, which is the third point. There is a type of system designed for extended grid outages that might occur at your property, often in rural areas of the state where power does go out for significant time.

So we know that supply can be unreliable in some areas.

That's probably around having more common smaller outages, you know, less than five hours at a time.

These power outages that these systems back up for probably more extended versions than that, 15 hours plus up to 72 hours.

We know in some rural areas they've had three day plus outages.

And these are the kind of systems that could be installed and usually a solar battery and maybe a generator system that's combined together so the project types can be used to reduce operational costs.

This is probably the most common actual version of behind the metre system.

You might have an office, a depot, something similar where there's a drawer and power at the property that's, you know, costing 2 to $5000 a year, maybe more.

And you install a solar battery system to try and obtain 40 to 80% savings and then pass that back on to community.

And there are versions of systems with batteries that can reduce household bills.

We don't, as John was saying, with a 20 kilowatt minimum, the grant will not be for household batteries themselves.

But there are scenarios with a group of houses, Community Housing together where you will have an embedded network parent metre at the top of the property and the battery goes at the parent metre and then spread through the embedded network and can provide savings to the household energy and passed on to the bills of the people that live in those properties, often larger systems as is noted here.

So lastly, I put in a bold because this is often feedback we receive, I guess as a part of our self determination to add a broader scope of staffing costs that can be put into the grant.

So it is for a project delivery staff member, but also to be able to build capacity in the community.

So the staff member doesn't have to solely work on this project could be .4 FTE or something similar.

And then using the rest of their time to build renewable capacity in the community.

So capacity as in knowledge in the community and just start here at the bottom.

If you were to put a grant out for a project with just solar, you would be on the other access up to 350 or just battery is the same in the combination of the 700,000.

The battery and solar don't have to be equal 350 each, but a combination together that you might have a little bit more spent on battery and solar, but the project itself has to be practical.

You wouldn't have 500 spent on battery and just a small 10 kilowatt solar system added to it.

It wouldn't be practical.

Great.

So I'm going to do some examples of projects now.

So as I was kind of talking about with the most common is decreasing bills for your organisation.

Install the solar battery system behind the metre on a property that is designed for that property's energy usage.

You can save between 40 and 80, if not more, depending on the way that usage is.

And then by decreasing your bills, decreasing your running costs as an organisation and passing that either directly on to services or just to the community as the service that your organisation provides.

And then there's a version of that for households.

So installing solar and battery on an embedded network that would be connected to several different child metres as I was talking about, and therefore reducing the costs to run those social public housing or for the renters that are in those properties.

This is a photo of an energy, energy resilience system.

So the big orange box there on that property is a generator.

Behind it is all the battery and solar equipment with the panels on the roof.

These communities are located in vulnerable areas with prolonged power outages.

So if your property is experiencing those kind of powerages, you've probably gone through them before and you have your personal experience.

You can connect to your local distributed business, Ausnet, Power Core, United Energy, whoever that person is, and they can provide data for you exactly how often and how long those go for.

And that can help design up a system so you can protect yourself in the immediate emergency when the power goes out.

So yeah, up to 72 hours is the most common response time.

The retailer partnerships. So as we're kind of going through these examples, they're getting slightly more complicated.

So or more complex.

The retailer partnership is an established agreement that you would have with a retailer to manage the installed solar and battery system.

So it might be the whole of battery, commonly the network side, you know, the retailer would manage the whole battery.

You can do versions coupled to reduce the electricity at your property.

So save your bills by put a slightly larger battery on, maybe even double the size what you need and use that 50% additional capacity to trade on the wholesale market.

And you would have that agreement just so that 50% to manage that for you the retailer the best suited to larger scale systems and you can look at examples on our website from previous rounds.

There are versions of all types of these systems and retailer versions from the round one and two of the 100 neighbourhood batteries program.

Great.

So there's a little bit more practical details and then I guess how to get onto the application portal.

So it is of course open and we can receive questions up until the 12th of May.

Because the application process is open, all essential questions can't be personal to your application itself, will have to be broad and then shared, usually on our website via an FAQs or frequently asked questions doc, so people can read through the kind of common questions that are asked to us and the replies we have.

And the majority of information is on the application guidelines and additional information from our website, so please check there first if you have curiosities.

The contacts here are below and we'll share this information after the session.

We can always feel free to email us Neighbourhood Batteries or the First People's Energy Team who are a division specifically for First People's engagement in the energy transition.

Great.

So the online form itself, you can go to our website, Scroll down a just a just a touch and there'll be a button there to start your application process.

It'll take you to a, I think a Salesforce grants page and you can dive straight into doing application through that process.

You can save and leave and then the draught will always be saved there for you.

You can print the whole document out as a PDF if you want to work on it, I guess offline or share it around as a team while you answer different sections of it and you can come back and forth with that saved.

Of course, up until the deadline, it won't be saved as a draught anymore and you won't be able to access it.

So make sure you do hit that send button before the 19th.

There are 4 criteria questions.

There's the majority of what the assessment is on.

The rest of the application essentially is for eligibility and how the program will be governed.

So the governance questions, I will cover the four criteria questions in a minute and kind of just explain what the assessment panel will be looking for.

And then there are additional attachments for the project.

DEECA has templates for the bottom 3 so delivery schedule, budget template and a risk management log.

These are encouraged but not required.

Your organisation will likely have similar templates to these, but if the same information is covered in those you know, they might be even presented in a better way than our templates can present them, so please feel free to do that.

I should note with the project plan too, that the a lot of information in that project plan will be similar to what you provide in the form online as well.

The additional document is used, I guess to understand further questions that we might have about a project that you could include governance in there and capacity about the team that will be working on it, the experience that they have a little bit more information on schedule and budgeting and things like that or how it might align with other plans within the organisation.

Okay, so this is the just a snapshot of the form.

It will start with eligibility questions.

If you answer no to any of this, it won't let you proceed.

So you obviously being an organisation that is eligible.

So any non for profit organisation or a more specific version that is listed there.

Are you a DNSP?

So they're the Gemini Ausnet.

So they're not allowed to apply.

So it's just a quick question.

And then yeah, the ABN and registered for GST and yeah, the lead organisation can demonstrate some operating history.

Great.

And then yeah, it'll cover off lead organisation details.

So you can have an ABN look up.

There is I think a link usually.

Then go to the ABN website and type your ABN in just to double check.

So that one and then basic organisational details.

So this isn't where the project might be installed.

This is where your organisation exists.

Now the address might be the same, of course, if you're doing it at your office and that's where your organisation address is, but it should be the same probably that's written on your ABN application.

And then some primary contract details is the next couple of steps.

Of course, just putting in your name and how we can get in contact with you via phone and email.

This will of course be how we let people know if they're successful or not successful.

If we'll have any follow up questions that might happen after or during our assessment process that we have some follow up questions, this is how we'll contact you.

I added this little part in to the presentation.

I thought that this could be possible with a lot of organisations who might have partnering organisations that can exist from consultancy installations, program management teams to the DNSP themselves that might not necessarily be helping you with the projects directly, but providing support to you.

There is another section for, you know, offers of support that, but these organisations would participate so you can just add their details in there.

There won't be further information essentially requested of them, but additional information in your project plan would probably be useful,

And this is a basic summary of your project. Again, there might be some information that you put in this section that is duplicated in how the project criteria, but yeah, basic summary description, the more succinct the better.

We're putting this size battery on this building to satisfy this criteria with these benefits.

So yeah, something succinct like that.

And then some very specific questions about how many batteries you're proposing and what size each battery is.

They're just open boxes, so you can just type them in.

Usually the kilowatt then kWh format is preferred.

So a 20 kWh system, 20 kilowatt system, sorry, with a 40 kWh battery size is a good format for it.

And what countries?

So what area in Victoria the project is going and the address and there's a couple more details below this that you could fill out.

So application then steps into the criteria.

Essentially the questions are listed the exact same way, but with I think 350 plus characters that you can put your response in.

And this is the main part of what we're going to assess in the project and it's listed directly in our application guidelines.

So you can always have a look at it criteria one.

Why should the project be funded?

How does this relate to our objectives of the project and the types of projects that we fund?

This is listed.

The outcomes in of the project are listed at the top of our application guidelines, so you can check them there and then how you will meet these priorities.

So yeah, 1 to list what outcome there is and then another to how you will achieve that outcome.

Further details about the project's financial viability and electrical savings would be a good place for this as well.

And any other additional information about the project, specifically if it's a outages, you know, listing the amount of outages that you're having and why this would respond to those.

It's a good part to put this in for the application criteria too.

It's just how complete the work is.

So your project plans, the details of the specific sizing of each battery and where it's located, how many there are, what the general schedule, budget and risk is, how long it's going to take, how much money is it going to require and what are the key risks.

Also good to include in here is the capability of your team.

So I guess skills that you have in this area of grant management, renewable management, renewable projects, project management, all those kinds of things and the capacity of the team.

So who's working on it?

How much time are they going to add to with their roles?

And you can include in here the new hire possibly that you would be using for grant funding and how much time that they would likely spend on the project knowing that you probably haven't hired them yet.

Criteria 3.

How will the project benefit the community?

So how the benefits from the local energy generation and storage will be passed on to First Peoples?

This is a very key criteria.

Just to describe what your organisation services are.

You could have direct links from savings to services that you provide or services you now will be able to provide given that you're saving internalised costs or have a revenue model from a front of me to battery that can add to these services.

It's good to understand that when going through this grant application for the assessors that what is the general benefit to community, the more that it can be quantified, the better.

Understandably, some of these things aren't quantifiable such as providing legal services, but I guess number of people that you might see within a year and the kind of staff that are required to do that is a good thing to know.

And finally, here's more.

The economics are just the budget and the modelling if it is the electrical savings of the property is understanding how much you're currently paying for electricity, how much this system would save.

If it's a more complex version, there are more complex questions in the criteria just around all the additional kind of services that are required to provide more complex projects that might be ongoing maintenance, insurance and other costs, retailer agreements, retailer annual fees, things that are added to the complexity of those projects in a much year by year model, probably over 10 year period.

The next stage of the application portal will have a budget at the bottom of this section.

Once you put in all the areas, we'll calculate whether they balance or essentially all the income from the project needs to balance the expenditure of the projects.

The amount at the top there with the Red Star on it will be the grant request.

You might have contributions internally, some philanthropic trusts, other contributions that are adding to the total cost of a project, just this project as well.

So you might have projects in other renewables that aren't a part of this grant request.

And you don't need to include any of those costings in here.

It's just for the specific project that you're doing it for.

In this section it will be the total grant requests.

So if you are requesting 4 different projects all themselves equal to less than $700,000 but are totalling more than $700,000 combined, you would put the total amounts in here.

So I thought I would cover off the templates that we provide from DEECA.

So just an idea of what is expected.

The application form will ask about the template several times as you're filling out criteria and budgets and things before you get to a section when you can upload them.

So it will say, oh, this is what's required at this stage, but you will be able to upload them in the final stages of the application form.

They won't be required at each budget and schedule section.

They have their own section at the end.

So this is a project schedule.

It's a fairly simple rough view, I think of what the schedule would be.

It doesn't have to be 14 or so lines, that this is for a renewable energy development centre.

You could have projects, commencement, design, procurement, installation, closure, so 5 or 6 lines.

But the more detail, the better, of course, to help us understand each step.

And that could include internal approvals requirements with, you know, the board approving tenders or installation quotes or whatever it is for the project.

The risk table, the version that DEECA has, has a little bit more information on it.

Besides these two sections, there is some other information of how to fill this out, but I thought I would just include the top section, which is a guide on how to rate a risk.

The risk table itself is below.

There are many ways to do kind of risk tables, but the key items we're looking for is what is the risk and how to mitigate it.

So I've written a an example in here.

So the installation team is delayed.

They're delayed by weather or availability.

So might be a busy installation team.

The impact of course is on the schedule and I've used the risk rating here at the top.

So the consequence is minor.

And so that's from the second column across in the consequence section.

And then if you go to the certainty or the likelihood, I've done possible.

And then if you meet those two things up, you'll get medium after the action mitigation is complete.

So in this action, the schedule is done in a long time in advance with days of recovery.

So I guess contingency days in which if there is adverse weather, we know we have one week where we can fill up some time, the person is responsible for that to the project manager.

And then does those mitigations change the consequence?

So if we were better planned, then the likelihood of this occurring would be less, the consequence would be the same, but the risk rating gets reduced, which is the ultimate goal.

Finally, the budget template very similar to the way it is in the form that the left section or the top section in this budget, which is the purple equals the bottom section, the yellow.

So yeah, the grant amounts can be put in by milestones and this can relate to your schedule that you put in.

So each milestone being a key payment for a grant and any other additional income for that project and then the costs associated to it.

This can be in as much detail as possible, so we can understand specific costs and if you have quote for equipment, you just chuck the exact number in here to align with that.

But I've put four key items here, the design of the projects, the equipment, the project management costs and staffing.

So it brings us to the end of the presentation portion, I guess of our session.

So we'll start going into the Q&A if there are questions there.

These are the basic timelines that I spoke at the top.

I guess the key one there is when it closes at 11 AM on Monday, 19th of May, it is at 11 AM.

It is in the morning.

So not a normal end of business 5:00 or close of day.

So just be sure that that's when your applications are in.

Great.

So we'll just go to the Q&A section.

So for those of you who've used the Q&A part to put a question in, I can see a few have come through.

So from Shane Rogers, does the staff member allowance allow for expert consultancy in renewables as opposed to employing somebody?

The staff allowance itself isn't for a consultant, but you can't allow for consultancy in your grant application.

So that would be specifically for work on the project, though it wouldn't be for the building capacity in the communities part of it.

So like a project manager consultancy, someone who might design the system consultancy or an installation team consultancy, whatever that version of that is.

Well, I'll pass to you, John, for the next question if there.

[Speaker John Griffiths]

Thanks Reahan.

Yeah, I think the the simple answer is showing question is it's up to you, use whatever stuff or external experts you want to to make your project succeed.

Another question we've come in is a really good one around if we have a financial modelling template to assist the answering to criteria for around project economics.

The short answer is it depends.

As Reahan sort of outlined, these neighbourhood battery, particularly when paired with solar projects can take sort of many different shapes and forms depending on whether it's behind or in front of the metre, if it is just focused on sort of build savings for a building or if it's doing sort of market wholesale market trading.

If it's the latter, the sort of financial modelling project economics gets a little bit more complicated and that's probably where your best bet would to be engage consultancy to provide some advice on project economics for those more sophisticated projects.

We do have some sort of tools and templates that we can point you towards that might be helpful, particularly if doing a a simpler project.

We've got a sort of business case financial modelling template on our website for battery projects that we can provide a link for in the chat.

And similarly, there are some sort of freely available tools on the web, not sort of government produced or endorsed, but can be pretty handy, that are generally designed for the household market.

But if you're talking about a sort of mid sized battery on an office or a community building and just having a behind the metre solar and battery system designed to save energy bills for that organisation, those online tools can be pretty helpful as well to understand what the cost benefit is.

And the only final thing I've mentioned on that is if it is that sort of simpler project, when you get quotes from a solar battery installer, they can typically provide you with some financial modelling that would be sufficient for us for those simpler projects.

Anything to add on that one Reahan before we go to the next question?

[Speaker Reahan Martin]

No, no, I think that was a very good answer.

It doesn't look like there's, there's a few questions currently in for reviews.

So they will pop up in our Q&A a second.

But please we have 20 minutes, so take your time responding.

[Speaker John Griffiths]

You want to take the one from Belinda there, Reahan?

[Speaker Reahan Martin]

Yeah, let me just double check I'm in the right section, just got published to it must be coming.

Yeah.

So Belinda, you've asked, do I go to a local solar specialist to assist with knowing exactly what kilowatt battery size we need?

Yeah, a local specialist will know based on your current electrical usage if this was for a behind the metre at your property kind of system.

We don't generally have advice from DEECA about, you know, whether they're local or not local.

I mean, they should be Victorian based probably and the more local they are, they more than might understand your community.

And of course we'll be able to access your property a lot easier.

But yes, that, that probably is a good step to go down.

Usually in our experience, depending on the complexity of the site, yeah, installation teams and things will be able to provide a like an initial quote and stuff for you for free.

So no cost is associated that the more complex it gets of course the more specialist requirement for that one.

[Speaker John Griffiths]

I can jump in on the next question from John there.

So you mentioned blackout protection as well as site usage.

I see that facilitating EV charging is a great way to democratise transport and community outreach.

So utilising or value adding community.

So utilising or value adding PB batteries may be appropriate for this purpose, especially for excess summer usage.

Does that sound reasonable for the program?

So there's, there's a bit in that John agree with I suppose all the the principles that you're talking about there in terms of how sort of EV charging might fit in with this program.

We can't fund any of sort of the EV charging infrastructure through this or the charger itself or any cabling conduits, Eetc for any EV charging.

But you're right that solar and batteries are often a really good accompaniment to EV charging on a particular site.

So what is, you know, acceptable under our program is if you have a site where EV charger has been identified as something that would like to go in, in the future, you can kind of future proof that in a way through this program by installing the solar and batteries on sight now that are going to provide the power for future EV charging.

And you know, in the meantime can hopefully provide some other benefits until you get that next step in the process.

And we have spoken to some organisations that are thinking along these lines.

So Yep, install solar and batteries if it, if you can talk to the criteria around how it's providing benefit back to community and First Peoples.

And if that includes future EV charging, then that is fine under this program.

[Speaker Reahan Martin]

OK, there's kind of no more questions for us, but we'll wait another 5 minutes.

We'll sit here quietly while you type.

But in the meantime, if you can't or don't have a specific question now, but you have one later, of course, reach out to us on our email addresses that we provided.

This recording will be put on our website.

All the information is on the website, email addresses, guidelines, access to those templates that we have.

We will continue to maybe send out some information.

Every week we'll update the FAQs, which is also on through that website, which can provide, yeah, that additional information that might be a little bit more specific to the projects or applications that are coming through.

So maybe at 2:45, we'll clock off.

So unless there's further questions, we'll give a couple of minutes as you're all thinking about any sort of final questions or start dropping off.

[Speaker John Griffiths]

Just wanted to thank everyone for coming along today and for interest in the program.

We're excited about it and hope that we can deliver some, some great and meaningful projects with you and you know, really, really appreciate the interest.

And as Reahan said, if you've got any questions, please do reach out and we will do our best to answer them within sort of the constraints of of probity.

So it might just mean that, you know, publishing AQ and a on our website during this application.

Speaker Reahan Martin

Great, thanks for that John.

There is a new question from Mick.

Is there a financial dollar cap on the amount you can apply for over multiple sites?

No, there isn't.

So each project itself, which is a per site, essentially there's a cap of $700,000, but across sites it's just you can be as many as you'd like.

So you could do 5 + 10 plus whatever.

Of course we will assess each project, each site on its own merit, but would also probably like to see, you know staffing costs spread across that and some economies of scale shared within those multiple sites.

Yeah, you likely won't need a staff member per site it and if there are multiple applications which we hope in this program, the ones that will be assessed with a higher score are ones that can achieve here some of that economies of scale.

[Speaker John Griffiths]

Maybe a new brief thing I'd add to that as well, Reahan is in our review process of applications, we if you put in an application with multiple sites and multiple projects, we may consider recommending just some of like one or two or three of those for funding rather than all that you asked for.

So best to prepare your projects in a way that they can sort of stand on their own.

And we will sort of clarify with you if we say if you've asked for five projects and we're considering funding 3, we will check with you whether we can sort of pro-rate down the funding request to the three sites.

[Speaker Reahan Martin]

Thanks, John.

I think we'll leave it there.

So I appreciate everyone for coming and yeah, we look forward to working with you with the applications that are successful.

We will plan to come out on country.

46:07
So we'll love to come and meet you face to face and see your sights that you've applied for as well.

46:14
But appreciate it.

46:16
Please enjoy your day.

46:18
Thanks everyone.

Page last updated: 22/04/25