A remote NT community built its own solar and battery — and cut power bills by about 70%
Marlinja, a small First Nations outstation in the Barkly, opened a community-owned solar and battery plant in June 2024. The design is the TOGS pitch at town scale: solar first, a modest battery for the evening, the NT grid when the pack is empty.
September 2026 · Marlinja, NTAn outstation on Country, 700 km south of Darwin
Marlinja is an outstation / homeland — a small remote Aboriginal community living on Country — in the Barkly region of the Northern Territory. About 60 residents. Roughly 700 kilometres south of Darwin, on the country between Darwin and Alice Springs.
In June 2024 the community opened what it describes as Australia’s first First Nations–owned, grid-connected solar microgrid, developed with the Indigenous clean-energy organisation Original Power. ABC News and Microgrid Knowledge both reported the launch. The work took years of planning. Part of the money sat under the Barkly Regional Deal. The rest came from donations and technology partners.
Residents had lived with prepaid meters and brittle supply. Ethan Godrey, a Marlinja resident quoted in the coverage, said the whole community had lost power and water for weeks when the network failed, and families were cut off for days when prepaid credit ran out. The plant is a local answer to that, not a press-release island.
A microgrid that still has a grid behind it
A microgrid is a small local power system that can run a town, mine, or farm on its own (or mostly on its own), with solar, batteries, and often a diesel or grid backup. Marlinja’s version is a grid-connected microgrid: local solar and battery that can still draw from the main NT network when the pack is empty.
About 100 kW
Daytime bulk for the houses. Surplus goes into the community battery.
About 136 kWh
Evening cover for a small community. Hours, not a week of autonomy.
The NT grid
When the battery is empty, households flip back onto the network. Diesel still sits in the Territory system behind that wire.
Prepaid meters and solar credits, in plain words
Many remote NT households settle power on a prepaid meter: a pay-as-you-go credit, like a phone plan. You buy a slice of electricity. When the credit runs out, the meter cuts the house. That is why a blackout is also a money event, not only a wire event.
Savings on the meter
Original Power worked with Jacana Energy, the NT retailer, on a benefit-sharing trial. Solar savings are applied to household meters, closer to the way a rooftop-solar home sees its own daytime generation.
The community holds the plant
The published claim is First Nations–owned and community-run, with training and local maintenance in the plan. That is a different product from a utility diesel station someone else owns.
About 70%. Not off-grid forever.
Lauren Mellor of Original Power told ABC the design was expected to cut residents’ power costs by about 70%: daytime solar, then the battery after dark, then the NT grid when the pack is empty. Treat that as the published claim via self-consumption and the battery — not off-grid forever.
Selling power back into the NT grid was still restricted at launch, pending wider storage and stability work. The community can draw when it is short. It could not yet export the leftover.
How many kWh for a community night?
A 136 kWh pack for about 60 people is a community night-load number, not a homestead number. Split it crudely and you are in the ballpark of a couple of kilowatt-hours per person if the pack ran flat — in practice houses share, the evening peak is lumpy, and mid-winter evenings still draw firming or the grid once the sun has been thin.
Compare that to a single homestead. A house that already sips at night might live on 10–20 kWh of usable battery. A house that cooks, pumps and heats after dark wants more. The rule does not change: size the battery to the night you actually live, then name the backup for the night that is longer than the pack.
Daytime-solar-heavy designs still win on cost because the cheap hours are the sunny ones. The battery is there to move some of those hours into the evening. It is not there to erase the Territory grid, or a diesel, from the drawing.
That is the same architecture we sell at farm and camp scale. Marlinja’s published numbers just make the evening-cover question easy to see.
Bills and security, not a marketing island
The TOGS pitch at this scale is bill reduction and energy security. Ownership and maintenance stay local. Absolute islanding — running with no wire and no genset, in every season — is a different, dearer job. Marlinja did not claim that job.
Self-consume
Run the houses on the array. Charge the community battery with what is left.
Ride the 136 kWh
Lights, fridges, the ordinary night. When the pack is empty, the grid is still there.
Name the backup
Grid now. Diesel somewhere behind the Territory system. Write those days down.
What we leaned on
Public figures in this piece come from the June 2024 launch coverage. The 70% line is the published expectation, not a year of audited bills in our hands.
A mine, a dairy, then your load
At mine scale, Bellevue Gold ran four days with the engines off. On a dairy, Wilandra Farms filled the dam while the sun was up. More notes live on Learn.
Solar, a modest battery, a named backup
We design plants for people who care what happens after dark and after three grey days — homes, farms, and commercial loads. If you want a system sized that way, talk to The Off Grid Shop.
Prefer to talk it through? Call or text 0483 927 257 — Lismore HQ, local voices.