Make energy useful locally
Civics, not civic: “Civic” often denotes government agencies or municipal bureaucracy. But government cannot and will not employ everyone using these grounds or be the sole beneficiary of their work. Instead, residents and locals are directly engaging in civics activities—community-led problem solving, mutual aid, hands-on enterprise, and shared stewardship—which in turn benefit the entire town. Civics infrastructure provides the practical energy, physical amenities, and open tools required to make this work possible.
Local energy metering and telemetry form an essential early building block. Understanding precise generation and consumption profiles helps operators manage tariffs, plan storage upgrades, and match daytime solar with productive community activities.
Assess solar on suitable roofs or other available space.
Understand when energy is produced and where it is needed.
Explore storage and activities whose timing can be adjusted.
Investigate participation by local clubs, households and farms.
For example, daytime generation and evening sports lighting happen at different times. A proposal to lower lighting costs needs to account for that timing, storage and the actual supply arrangements.
A development direction, not an operating energy market. Metering, billing, energy sharing and power supply are different functions. Their technical and commercial arrangements need to be established before promising lower prices or energy trading.
Explore useful flexible demand
Some uses of electricity may be able to run at times when more local generation is available. The discussion explores connecting this flexibility to practical community services.
Questions for a pilot
Which activities can change their timing? What equipment and controls are needed? Do operating savings justify those costs? Does the service still work when generation is low?
An idea needing separate study
The author mentions plastic pyrolysis—processing plastics using heat with limited oxygen—as a possible use of surplus energy. This is an exploratory example, not a selected technology or a demonstrated environmental benefit.
Any proposed waste-processing activity needs its own technical, environmental, operational and economic assessment. The community grounds concept does not depend on adopting it.
Digital services with human control
Decentralised digital architecture is vital to ensure community infrastructure operates under user control rather than corporate surveillance. Utilising open-standard, W3C Solid-interoperable data pods and edge appliances allows residents to store personal credentials and energy telemetry securely on-site. The key benefit of Solid is that it provides an open standard that enables seamless interoperability between independent systems that may be built using various technologies.
Solid describes an open specification in which people keep data in portable stores called Pods and control application access across multiple independent tools and platforms. Read the Solid project's explanation ↗
This foundation powers our dedicated edge infrastructure—including local transactive microgrids, containerised databoxes, and offline-first AI orchestration hubs.
Explore the full digital architecture: Read our detailed breakdown of edge databoxes, transactive energy trading, and local AI hubs on the Digital economy page ↗.
An Australian starting point, a wider horizon
Domestic solutions at regional community grounds are designed strategically to be adapted in developing regions, supporting international goals such as affordable clean energy, high-bandwidth connectivity, and disaster-resilient community hubs.
UNICEF's Project Connect ↗ provides a vital international benchmark for mapping connectivity and establishing school and community grounds as digital transformation access nodes.
The opportunity is to share what is learned about infrastructure, operations and human needs. A model developed at an Australian community ground would still need to be redesigned with each community's institutions, climate, resources and priorities.
What would make the learning reusable?
- Documented components and the conditions under which they work.
- Transparent costs, maintenance needs and evidence of outcomes.
- Digital interfaces and data practices that can be understood and adapted.
- Local governance and meaningful participation in decisions.