Island Energy is a joint project of the Kangaroo Island Council and the Regional Development Australia Hills and Coast Board.

It plans to use alternative technologies to generate energy for use on Kangaroo Island, to supplement power available from the undersea cable and on-island diesel generation.

The project succeeded in the expressions-of-interest phase of the grants process in January.

“We haven’t got a lot of time to finalise our submission and we are keen to get feedback from islanders,” the council’s chief executive officer Andy Boardman said.

He said the project would be a long-term one. It would first demonstrate the island’s capacity for growth, then look at the complex issues of power distribution and alternative generation, and finally investigate exporting power back to the mainland. The council had recently heard a presentation from Waverider Energy, which plan to test wave power technology off the island’s coast.

“These technologies are improving and developing all the time as the energy market is changing very quickly,” Mr Boardman said.

He invited interested people to go to the project’s website at kangaroo

islandenergy.com to learn more and comment.

Shauna Black