Simone Ewenson and her partner Morgan had wanted to go solar for quite a few years. They weren’t quite ready when the first round of MASH solar panels went in, but they saw how successful it was, so when MASH2 came up, they thought, OK, now’s the time. They had also wanted to wait until they knew the system would be compatible with the new battery technology.
“It’s nice to support a community project,” Ewenson says, on why they chose to go with MASH Solar.
“They’d done all the hard work. Basically, it was the ease. And I felt that if there were any issues that I did have someone to talk to, rather than an energy company. Even things like – although our installer was wonderful – but if there were [going to be] any issues, sometimes dealing with those people can be very difficult, especially if you don’t know what you’re actually talking about. It was just [having] that back up; it went wonderfully.”
She says, “They made it such an easy process. I don’t think I even spoke to anyone at MASH; I didn’t go to any meetings; I just did it all online. And then I spoke to SunEdison, and that was it. I think because we’d already made up our minds, it was just a matter of looking at what we needed, and that was it. [And the process] was like signing up, really: it was very easy, no problems whatsoever. Everything was really clearly communicated.”
Ewenson hopes that in the future, if enough people in Castlemaine get solar, we could even have our own solar energy company.
You have to work with what you’ve got, and I guess with the community projects, that’s what makes them so amazing. Within our community, we do the best that we can to make the changes.