Farmers are getting renewable Standalone Power Systems as Western Australia's regional power grid is dismantled

Devastating summer bushfires torched the power poles and knocked Craig Poultney's farm off-grid, but there's a silver lining: the solar panels and batteries that were installed the following winter.

The vast and expensive state-owned network that crisscrosses the wheat and canola fields, bringing electric light and power to remote farmhouses, is being partly dismantled.

Each "Standalone Power System" (SPS) is a fairly simple piece of technology, but the cumulative effect of the planned rollout will be enormous: 23,000km of wire will be taken down, or enough to string a power line around mainland Australia.

At Craig Poultney's farm near Corrigin, about three hour's drive east of Perth, the SPS hums quietly in a paddock near the main house.

A fenced area contains about 60 ground-mounted solar panels providing nearly 20kW of energy, of about four-times the amount of a standard rooftop solar array.

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