SEIC, (State Energy Innovation Centre, The Centre, The Transition Centre etc))

There is no single project or answer to the problem of jobs and hope when the foreign owned Power Stations decide to shed the rest of the power station workforce in the Latrobe Valley.

However we can be prepared and have systems in place.

There is as yet no commercially viable technologies to stabilise and enable the transition to a distributed grid, even though this transition has already begun.

We can however, begin to build smaller scale community owned systems to learn and educate ourselves and our workforce. We can research and develop the tools, the hardware, the software and the new business models that will inevitably follow this change.

We have sought to address the problems faced by both our community and the grid itself with a combination of distributed impact disruptive models that focus on emerging technologies, cooperative research and community ownership.

In September 2015 VotV submitted a paper to the Victorian State Government outlining our thinking on the establishment of a research facility into new energy technologies to the RET Review. The working name of the project was the SEIC.

 The initial SEIC social impact model

Evolving from there the SEIC or Transition Centre is a jobs and collective impact - future industry initiative that blends existing hard and soft infrastructure, new energy technologies and a blend of business models.

Initiated by the community, it will work together with government and business and educational facilities to provide a pathway for transition to the future industries.

The project will initially focus on the brokering and founding of a Transition Centre and industry incubator, to retool the industrial and educational base of the Latrobe Valley for the requirements of a 2050 Hybrid Energy future.

In its design the legacy Industry Institutions, Educational Institutions, Social Services and Community Co-ops all have their role.

The stand alone but interdependent functions are designed to work together and create a sustainable economic ecosystem that encourages both innovation and community participation in the ownership of our own future.