Australia’s Largest Solar Project

Joshua S Hill — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:11:05 +0000

If I were to travel north-north-west for a few hours, I would exit Melbourne-proper within about an hour (the traffic can be hell!). After that I would slowly make my way up through country-suburbia and enter towns which would like to consider themselves ‘good old fashioned country towns’. I would eventually hit Mildura, where a new solar plant will soon begin to emerge from the ground.

This story was kicked off by this one here at ForeignPolicy.com, where they list several new solar projects going up around the world. Considering that there was one close to home, I decided to focus in on that one.

Expected to cost some $420 million AUD ($270 million USD) the project is being constructed by Hong Kong-owned TRUenergy. The plant – which is planned to begin generating power by 2010, and be completed 2013 – is looking to provide solar power to some 45,000 homes.

The project will avoid an approximate 437,000 tons of annual greenhouse-gas emissions that would have been produced by a coal-fired plant of the same output. But despite the seeming size of this project, the total output will only account for .1 percent of Australia’s electricity generation (according to statistics from 2006).

Green Options » truenergy

Australia’s Largest Solar Project