Australia, as a rule, does not tend to do things by halves!
Approval has been provided to build a solar panel farm that is four times as big as the city of Sydney – a staggering size. Those involved in the scheme are the New South Wales Government, AGL Energy and the Australian Federal Government.
This solar farm will appear small in relation to the two to be built in Australia.
(image credit: mcmees24)
The Australian Federal Government is to provide AGL Energy with funding of almost $166.7 million and the New South Wales Government will provide $64.9 million to help with the development of two sites that are situated in New South Wales. These sites will be one of the largest solar power schemes on the planet with one of the sites being the biggest solar photovoltaic scheme constructed in the southern hemisphere.
The solar farms are to be situated at Broken Hills and Nyngan and it is estimated that they will cost in the region of $450 million to construct. The Education Investment Fund is to provide $40.7 million and AGL Energy will provide $200 million.
The bigger of the two plants will be Nyngan that will generate 102 megawatt whilst Broken Hill will generate 53 megawatt. The Nyngan operation will be able to produce sufficient to provide power to as many as 50,000 residential dwellings. This may be from as early as the middle of 2015. The farm at Broken Hill could be up and running by November 2015.
On average, over a twelve-month period, the two schemes are expected to be capable of generating 360,000 electricity megawatt hours in a year with this being sufficient to provide power for in excess of 50,000 average sized homes.
It is hoped that work will get underway in January 2014 and create many jobs.
It will be interesting to see if anywhere in the UK will come anywhere close to the size of the biggest of these two schemes in the future.
