Australia’s Labor Party has pushed the solar industry into the election campaign spotlight vowing to turn thousands of schools into virtual power plants.

The programme unveiled this week by opposition leader Bill Shorten would invest AU$1 billion (US$704 million) to add 364MW of solar and battery storage across 4,000 schools, starting with a few frontrunners.

The so-called Solar Schools initiative would be funded via the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, a state-owned green bank created when Labor was last in power in the early 2010s.

Backed by concessional loans from the body, schools would roll out new PV and battery systems or renovate existing installations. The excess power produced would feed into the grid, unlocking a new revenue stream for the centres.