{"id":75988,"date":"2026-08-19T23:47:24","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T23:47:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/75988\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T23:47:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T23:47:24","slug":"uriarra-village-residents-are-concerned-about-the-impacts-of-a-proposed-battery-storage-site","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/75988\/","title":{"rendered":"Uriarra Village residents are concerned about the impacts of a proposed battery storage site"},"content":{"rendered":"

Uriarra Village, at the foothills of the Brindabellas, feels removed from the hum of Canberra’s city life just 30 minutes away, and that is why locals love it.<\/p>\n

Resident Alison Thomas has enjoyed the surrounds for almost 10 years.<\/p>\n

“So we came out to inspect the house … and it’s just this landscape of mountains and paddocks and gum trees, and there was a swarm of yellowtail black cockatoos,” Ms Thomas said.<\/p>\n

“It was just so serene and peaceful and it’s not like living anywhere else in Canberra,” she said.<\/p>\n

But Ms Thomas fears for the landscape’s future over plans for a 520-megawatt battery proposed for Uriarra Station, two kilometres from the village.<\/p>\n

If approved, it would be roughly twice the size of the Williamsdale battery energy storage system, which sits at the ACT’s southern border.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The battery would capture excess renewable energy and then feed it into the grid in times of higher demand.<\/p>\n

‘”It’s a rural landscape, and we’re trying to put in an urbanised industrial facility that’s going to create light pollution, noise pollution, visual pollution into an area that people come to for peace,” Ms Thomas said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘Right facility in the wrong location’\"An<\/p>\n

An artist’s impression of a proposed battery site to the north-east of Uriarra Village residences.\u00a0 (Supplied: Private Energy Partners)<\/p>\n

Ms Thomas said she supported battery storage in principle but believed the rural location on the edges of Canberra’s nature parks was the wrong site for the industrial infrastructure.<\/p>\n

“I’m all for green energy. I’m all for battery storage, but it’s the right facility in the wrong location,” she said.<\/p>\n

Ms Thomas said the area was valued for its tranquillity, natural environment, cultural and pastoral history and gateway to the mountains.<\/p>\n

“They can’t just look inside their little construction zone and say, ‘no, there’s no other impact’ because they’re actually part of a landscape,” she said.<\/p>\n

Ms Thomas said the company had held one community information session so far, but said she had more questions than answers after the meeting.<\/p>\n

“When we asked how much noise impact this would have, they couldn’t tell us. When we asked what the bushfire modelling looked like, they hadn’t done it. When we asked about light pollution, they couldn’t tell us what the light pollution would look like,” she said.<\/p>\n

‘Tell us what is going on’<\/p>\n

Fellow resident Jeremy Hagan said he has fully electrified his home with solar panels and a battery.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We have to decarbonise the grid,” Mr Hagan said.<\/p>\n

He said he feared that an inability to address the effects of global warming would increase the frequency of catastrophic bushfire seasons like that experienced in 2019-2020.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Jeremy Hagan says there are concerns over noise pollution. (ABC News: Mark Moore)<\/p>\n

Mr Hagan said while he had not expressed it to Quinbrook, the company behind the battery, his main concern was noise.<\/p>\n

“I don’t want to be sitting in my home, working at home three days a week, hearing a constant background hum and having to have the windows shut, for example, and play music so that I don’t hear it,” he said.<\/p>\n

While he said his views differed from others in the village, as he was tentatively supportive of the facility, he agreed residents needed to be consulted.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“They should just come and tell us what is going on,” Mr Hagan said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I don’t feel like communities should necessarily try and find every single possible reason to stand against this sort of infrastructure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Where it’s plain Nimbyism, I’m very much against that.<\/p>\n

“[But] legitimate concerns should be taken into account, and we should be listened to by the developers because we are the locals,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not our backyard, it’s Canberra’s<\/p>\n

For Ms Thomas, the objection is not just about how the development impacts her village but what she sees as a broader loss for the whole city.<\/p>\n

“We have cyclists and motorists coming out here every day to enjoy that serenity and that landscape, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“If we industrialise what’s left of our western edge, there’s nothing left for them to enjoy.<\/p>\n

“We’re not just worried about it being in our own backyard for our own sake, we’re worried about it for the wider Canberra community,” she said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Residents in Uriarra Village in the ACT have raised concerns about a proposed battery storage facility. (ABC News: Mark Moore)<\/p>\n

In a statement, Quinbrook said the project’s “design and layouts are still being finalised to reduce impacts on the surrounding landscape, protect local cultural heritage and be considerate of neighbouring communities”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The project is designed to reduce its footprint and minimise impacts on the surrounding community and environment,” the statement read.<\/p>\n

“The project will comply with relevant government regulations for day and night-time noise, with minimal lighting to be used.”<\/p>\n

Quinbrook said its community engagement began in May with a further session planned in October.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The proposal is currently before the federal government for environmental approval under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Uriarra Village, at the foothills of the Brindabellas, feels removed from the hum of Canberra’s city life just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4817,22,21,112455,29299,112457,2184,112458,112456,7875,12421,112454],"class_list":["post-75988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-act","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-battery","tag-battery-storage","tag-brindabellas","tag-canberra","tag-quinbrook","tag-quinbrooks-flat-rock-energy-storage-project","tag-renewable-energy","tag-residents","tag-uriarra-village"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}