Solar To Help Power Queensland Hospital Linen Services

Wide Bay Group Linen Service’s Maryborough Facility | Image via Bruce Saunders MP/Facebook

One of the largest linen service providers in Australia is to have solar panels installed on its facilities in order to cut electricity costs and emissions.

Announced yesterday by Queensland Minister for Health Steven Miles, Group Linen Services will have solar power systems installed at its facilities in Wide Bay, at Prince Charles Hospital and Princess Alexandra Hospital.

Group Linen Services is a specialist healthcare laundry and linen hire business owned by Queensland Health that provides 330 tonnes of clean linen each week. As the service operates between the hours of 6am and 6pm, it’s a good fit for commercial solar.

Details haven’t been provided as yet regarding the capacity of the systems to be installed at the facilities, but it’s expected GLS will see energy cost savings in the vicinity of $200,000 a year once the rollout is complete.

Member for Maryborough Bruce Saunders said GSL is also working on a range of energy-saving measures across its facilities.

“It’s great to see another Maryborough business install solar panels and do their part to be more energy efficient,” he said.

Australian Commercial Solar Booming

As has been the case with home solar power, costs involved with commercial PV have plummeted in recent years and various financing options are also available. According to the Solar Quotes Commercial Solar Guide:

“If your business can afford to pay its electricity bills, it can afford the cost of commercial solar power”.

Preliminary figures provided to RenewEconomy by SunWiz in January indicate commercial solar installations made up more than 30 per cent of <100kW capacity in Australia during 2017. The 10-20kW range saw 72 per cent growth and 75-100kW installations jumped 82 per cent. Overall, there was 60 per cent growth in the sub-100kW commercial solar market.

There’s certainly no shortage of commercial roofs throughout Australia’s towns and cities that could be harvesting the financial and other benefits from harnessing the energy of the sun. In addition to slashing energy costs and emissions, integrating solar can also act as flag to customers that a company cares about its environmental impact.

As we mentioned yesterday, recent analysis has suggested commercial and other rooftops in Adelaide’s CBD alone could host more than 500,000 solar panels. SQ blogger Ronald recently put together a case study of an Adelaide CBD business that has installed a small commercial system (10.9kW) and experienced a simple payback period of just three years.