Going green and saving bucks – Bathurst Regional Council
This month will see the installation of solar panels on Bathurst Regional Art Gallery and City Library, the latest in a series of Council solar projects.
Situated approximately 200 kilometres north-west of Sydney, Bathurst is a regional city of 43,000 in the Central Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia.
In 2012, Bathurst Regional Council developed a Distributed Energy Plan, which had a special focus on the installation of solar power systems on its facilities.
This latest system, with 80kW capacity, will generate an estimated 123MWh of electricity and avoid 107 tonnes of carbon emissions a year. It will produce enough electricity to cover up to 20 – 25 per cent of the facility’s annual requirements.
The solar panel array will save Council approximately $21,000 per annum on electricity bills and take the total annual savings from installed projects to $95,000 based on current electricity prices.
“Since 2009, council has installed 224kW of solar generation across 11 sites including a 50kW system at the Water Filtration Plant in 2014 and a 100kW ground-mounted system at the Waste Water Treatment Plant in June last year,” said Mayor Graeme Hanger.
Including this latest installation, the 304kW of installed solar capacity will crank out around 490 MWh of clean electricity a year and avoid 422 tonnes CO2-equivalent annually.
Image : Bathurst Regional Council
The Council’s interest in solar energy kicked off with the installation of a 2kW system on the Bathurst Visitor Information Center in 2009; funded the Australian Government’s ‘Nation Building – Economic Stimulus Plan’.
More recently, funding for Council’s solar installations have been via a Revolving Energy Fund, which plows savings from previous projects into new arrays.
Last year, Bathurst Regional Council was named a finalist in the NSW Government’s Green Globe Awards, which recognise excellence in environmental leadership and innovation in sustainability.
It’s not just Council reaping the bill-busting benefits of harvesting the sun’s energy. Bathurst’s postcode, 2795, is home to more than 2,423 solar power system installations under 100kW, representing 10,200 kilowatts capacity in total according to the most recent data available from Australia’s Clean Energy Regulator.
If you’re in the Bathurst area and considering going solar, check out our listings and reviews of Bathurst solar panel installers.
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