BARCALDINE has been grabbing news headlines in the past few years because of the coal prospecting taking place in the region but now it’s power from the sun that is looking to set up on the town’s outskirts.
It’s the amount of sun received in the area – more than anywhere else in Australia and potentially more than anywhere else in the world – plus a site beside Ergon Energy’s main western Queensland sub-station and a gas-fired power station, that has a Spanish consortium planning to build a photovoltaic solar farm in the central west.
Consisting of 76,000 modules and spreading over 35 hectares on Barcaldine’s eastern outskirts, the project was received warmly when the Elecnor-Kingsway joint venture was presented for community consultation in the town recently.
The prospect of 100 construction jobs, with as much work as possible contracted to locals, was the best news received on the night.
Questioners were assured that the project, which has been in development since 2013 with the purchase of the freehold site and submission of development approvals, wouldn’t upset airline flight paths with glare.
Possibly the only downside heard by meeting attendees was that the project wasn’t expected to reduce the price of power.
“We will hand the power we generate to Ergon for transmission to the national grid,” project manager Graeme Pollock said.
“A 25 MegaWatt farm won’t bring the price down. You’d need to build something 400 times the size to do that.”
It’s expected to generate 53,000MW hours once built at a cost of $80M.
According to Mr Pollock, the farm’s planned site, beside a gas-fired power station, offers a unique opportunity to explore ways in which the two energy sources can integrate.
“Whether you run solar for eight hours and then fire up the gas – that might play to their strengths,” he said.
“It’s certainly a project that will be studied because of these unique things.”
Barcaldine mayor Rob Chandler welcomed those comments and said Ergon Energy, as the owner of the gas-fired station, needed to work in unison with the solar farm to get the best outcome for Queenslanders.
“The gas-fired plant has a maximum output of 30 to 35MW and collectively it and the solar farm are just short of 60MW when you put them together – that’s serious power capacity.”
Following the impact assessment phase, Elecnor will consider the issues raised and re-examine the design if necessary.
If approved, construction is expected to commence in 2016. Once complete, the solar power farm is only expected to employ a maximum of six people.
Sally Cripps
Journalist
Journalist
