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Category: Solar Energy / Drought / Rural / Community Development / Federal - State Issues / Regional Development

Sunny western Queensland to become a hub for solar farms

Sunday, 6 Nov 2016 13:00:26 | Lucy Murray

The 25MW Barcaldine solar farm will be connected to the grid in December. (ABC News)

Western Queensland is becoming a major hub for solar energy, with the state's largest solar power farm soon to go online near Barcaldine and construction of another major project about to get underway in Longreach.

Six solar projects partially funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) were either recently completed or being built across Queensland.

Construction is expected to begin on another six projects next year.

With construction of the 25 megawatt (MW) Barcaldine solar farm now finished, work is underway to connect the 79,000 panels to the state's electricity grid with about 580 kilometres of cable.

It will feed the grid with the capacity to power more than 8,000 homes once finished by mid-December, enough to light up Barcaldine 11 times over.

A short distance away, work will soon begin on the 15MW Longreach Solar Farm.

Canadian Solar was successful in the last round of ARENA funding and will begin construction on the project early next year.

General manager Daniel Rouss said the Longreach area was perfect for solar power.

"Certainly one of the best in the world," he said.

"Basically it's good infrastructure, radiance, the amount of sunlight, support from the council, access to local community contractors. It has everything we need."

Longreach grazier James Walker said the long-running drought prompted him to diversify his operations and get involved in solar.

"You know through adversity it sort of really impacts you to make decisions and get things happening," he said.

"We don't have much cloud cover out here — in the middle of the drought I supposed we signalled that.

"I think it just makes a lot of sense, we have a lot of sunny days here and long day lengths."

Longreach Solar's Daniel Rouss with local grazier James Walker Photo: Longreach Solar's Daniel Rouss with local grazier James Walker. (ABC News: Lucy Murray)

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