Follow-up of recent community session in Griffith
The Griffith BESS project team spent once again valuable time in Griffith to meet with many locals and community members to discuss and update on the proposed Griffith BESS development process. Together with Camilla Hamilton from our planning consultancy Cogency, Fernando Torres-Moncayo, our Project Development Manager for Griffith BESS and Kait Goudge, our Planning and Approvals Manager, spent three days in Griffith between May 14-16 to learn from and connect with community members and share updates about Griffith BESS at three different events.
May 14 - Community Benefit Sharing afternoon tea
We invited to a Community Benefit Sharing afternoon tea between 3:00pm and 4:30pm on Wednesday the 14th of May 2025 at the Griffith Exies.
The purpose of the session was to give local not-for-profit groups, social enterprises and relevant representatives of local initiatives an opportunity to meet the project team, learn more about the Proposal and the proposed community benefit sharing scheme which we call Powering Big Dreams. Through Powering Big Dreams, we partner with communities to create lasting benefits by funding initiatives that support education, social connectedness and environmental sustainability.
We were pleased to host 6 attendees for our afternoon tea and heard first-hand about the great initiatives that are already being undertaken in Griffith and where there may be opportunities for Griffith BESS to support across various community projects.
May 15 - Community drop-in session
We held a community drop-in session between 12-6:30pm on May 14 at the Griffith Library. We aimed to give neighbours, local community members, representatives from Griffith Council as well as local businesses and not-for-profit groups a chance to meet the project team, learn more about the technical details of the Proposal and the Powering Big Dreams program, our proposed community benefits sharing initiative.
We are pleased to have met about eleven people at the drop-in session and were able to answer many questions around why Griffith BESS is needed, the potential impact on the local community like fire risk or noise; end of life and recycling; what benefits our Powering Big Dreams program will deliver to the local community. All the answers to the questions can be found on www.ekuenergy.com/griffith.
May 16 - Coffee catch-up
We hosted a coffee catch-up at Limone in Griffith between 8-10am as we wanted to provide a final opportunity during our visit to meet with the local community. Bustling with activity on a Friday morning, the team enjoyed a morning coffee at Limone with local residents, business owners, not-for-profits and representatives of local and state government. We talked about how we are engaging with the local fire services to ensure that any potential fire risk is mitigated; we discussed local needs and initiatives that Eku Energy could support; and we explained the studies we undertake to understand and mitigate concerns such as noise emissions and traffic.
We are very grateful to the Griffith community to be so welcoming, friendly and approachable. After these three days we returned to Melbourne, where the Griffith BESS project team is based, with many valuable inputs for the design of Griffith BESS, as well as ideas for great initiatives for our Powering Big Dreams program.
We are looking forward to meeting many others from the local community in the weeks and months to come to learn more so we can ensure that Griffith BESS delivers not only on energy security and accelerating the energy transition, but also for the local community.