New Solar Plant Adds To Sunny Outlook

Our parliament is now set to be home to a new solar farm project. That’s right, the ACT is planning to make further use of any sunny rays coming its way with the new Royalla Solar Farm initiative. Royalla is located around 23km south of Canberra’s central business district

Simon Corbell, minister for the environment and sustainable development, congratulated Fotowatio Renewable Ventures (FRV) on its announcement of financial close  for the project. He noted that this is important news, after FRV was granted a feed-in tariff, winning the ACT government’s large-scale solar auction in the fast-track stream.

Solar auctions are a part of the ACT’s sustainable energy policy, designed to promote the use of solar energy around Canberra and the rest of the territory. The solar auction process aims to create competition and drive prices down, while making sure that projects remain viable with managed risks.

“All funding agreements are now in place for the project and FRV is able to start work on site. This demonstrates the financial viability of the project, at the low price of $186 per megawatt hour bid by FRV,” said Mr Corbell.

The Royalla project will be made up of around 83,000 solar photovoltaic panels, which is enough to supply electricity for 4,500 homes in Canberra. The 20 megawatt facility will be the largest photovoltaic solar farm built in Australia so far. Construction is slated to reach completion by mid 2014.

“Canberra has set an Australian benchmark for low-cost large-scale solar,” said Mr Corbell.

It is hoped that the new solar farm will bring a number of benefits to the community, including job opportunities during the construction and following operational phase, clean electricity to meet the region’s needs and further development of the Australian clean energy industry.

If you want your own eco friendly products of the solar variety, you could consider installing rooftop solar panels on your own home.