Bendigo's green tech roadmap: What's next from local labs and startups

Bendigo's green technology sector is quietly building a pipeline of products that prioritize energy efficiency and workplace productivity over flashy consumer gadgets, according to project briefs and demo days held across the city's innovation hubs over the past month.

Several early-stage companies are now targeting late 2027 for field trials of new energy storage and monitoring systems, developers told attendees at the July 8 Bendigo Cleantech Showcase. The city's tech scene, anchored by the La Trobe University Bendigo Campus and the Bendigo Innovation Precinct on Mitchell Street, has increasingly focused on hardware that reduces building energy use without requiring occupants to change their behavior.

Storage and sensors take center stage

One Bendigo-based startup, whose prototypes were demonstrated at the Innovation Precinct's co-working space on June 29, is developing a solid-state thermal battery designed to integrate with existing commercial HVAC systems. The company's preliminary data suggests the unit could cut peak cooling load by up to 40 percent, though those figures have not yet been independently verified. A spokesperson for the startup said the next 12 months will be spent securing partnerships with three regional commercial landlords before a broader rollout.

Another local team, spun out of a research project at La Trobe's Centre for Technology in Water and Wastewater, is field-testing a low-cost sensor array that monitors real-time soil moisture and nutrient levels. The device, which communicates over the long-range LoRaWAN network already deployed across the Bendigo council area, aims to help peri-urban farms reduce irrigation water use by roughly 25 percent. A small pilot involving five properties along the Calder Highway began in early July.

Smart glasses without the surveillance baggage

On the consumer side, a different philosophy is emerging. In a market crowded with camera-equipped smart glasses, one Bendigo-connected developer is betting that productivity, not recording capability, will win over office workers. Even Realities, whose prototypes were shown at a private investor briefing in Bendigo on July 11, has built a pair of transparent display glasses that contain no camera at all. The product relies on a phone tether to pull calendar notifications, task lists and navigation cues directly into the user's field of view.

“The bet is that workers want access to information without feeling they are being recorded or are recording others,” said a product manager familiar with the development timeline, speaking on condition of anonymity because the briefing was closed. The company expects to open preorders for developers by September 2027, with a full consumer launch likely in early 2028. A street-level launch price has not been set, but internal estimates place it under $700 AUD to compete with higher-end productivity wearables.

The approach aligns with data from the Bendigo Digital Workplace Survey, which in March found that 63 percent of local knowledge workers are reluctant to use camera-enabled devices in open-plan offices. That sentiment is shaping how several regional tech employers approach their own green-tech roadmaps.

Bendigo's local government has signaled it will continue to support clean-tech prototyping through its Smart City grants program, which awarded $1.2 million in total across six projects in the 2025-26 financial year. Applications for the next round close on October 15, 2026. For companies still in the design phase, that funding window represents the most immediate public runway before the next wave of field trials begins.