Meet the man who loves talking about Phillip Island’s new collection of batteries

When Bass Coast resident Werner Theinert retired from the energy industry in 2020, after 45 years, he didn’t think anyone would be interested in listening to him speak about batteries. He was wrong.

Theinert told the Monitor he began his career working for the SEC in the mid-’70s, and by 2020 he had “worked for all of the power stations in the Latrobe Valley, in various roles”.

Theinert was working in operations training at Loy Yang B Power Station in 2020 when Covid hit, and chose to retire.

After the pandemic, Theinert was approached by U3A Wonthaggi, a volunteer organisation that runs educational lectures for mature aged students, to do a talk on energy.

“After spending 20-plus years training people, it sort of came natural,” Theinert said.

Six people signed up for his first course, and soon interest in his talks snowballed.

“That six turned into 20 people. Then Bass Coast adult learning heard about it and wanted to run a couple of courses. Then Phillip Island Community and Learning Centre wanted [a course] so I did a single term there as well.”

And now? “Looks like I'm the renewables and resilience guru,” Theinert said with a smile.

During his talks he is often asked about community batteries, in particular the Phillip Island community batteries that were turned on a month ago.

What are the Phillip Island community batteries?

The six batteries already installed are located around the island. The seventh, which will be housed at the Berninneit building in Cowes - is yet to be installed.

The batteries were installed under the Victorian state government’s 100 Neighbourhood Batteries Program and aim to drive down energy bills and make the grid more resilient to extreme weather events.

Theinert told the Monitor the batteries will charge themselves “during the day, when there's lots of excess solar energy”, then “supply power in the morning or the evening when the price of energy goes through the roof”.

Where will the seventh battery be placed?

Theinert said the seventh battery will help transform Berninneit “into a resilience hub”. For example, if  there is a blackout on Phillip Island, “Berninneit will still have the power. They'll still have lights, and people will be able to go there to get some water, power and charge their devices”.

The batteries are operated by Mondo, a subsidiary of AusNet.

What does the community think?

Bass Coast councillor Mat Morgan told the Monitor “the community is overwhelmingly supportive of any sort of energy resilience projects”.

“Bass Coast is well versed in having power outages … so having localised battery grids is really important, and I think the whole community is behind it.”

A Mondo spokesperson told the Monitor that seven percent of revenue from the batteries will be donated to Bass Coast Shire Council to be invested in community energy projects, in concert with Totally Renewable Phillip Island.