SunEdison, Inc. (NYSE:SUNE) has announced it has closed financing and commenced construction on a 1-megawatt solar facility at Karratha Airport – Western Australia’s largest airport solar power station.
The plant, which will feature Cloud Predictive Technology (CPT), is expected to generate approximately 1,805 megawatt-hours of energy each year – enough to power more than 300 Australian homes.
The clean power station will avoid the emission of 1,200 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually; the equivalent of removing 260 cars from the road.
Karratha Airport will purchase the solar generated electricity through a 21-year power purchase agreement (solar PPA).
“With this solar power plant, Karratha Airport officials expect to save millions of dollars on the airport’s energy costs over the life of the power purchase agreement,” said Jeremy Rich, SunEdison Australia’s managing director. “Karratha Airport is a great example of how organizations and homeowners in communities across Australia can save on their electricity costs and help the environment by using solar.”
The Karratha Solar project was developed by David Webster of Webster Power Company. Having identified an opportunity to supplement grid electricity supply with renewable energy at Karratha Airport, Webster Power Company established term sheets with constructions partners CPS National and technology supplier MPower, offtake with the City of Karratha and initiated the ARENA grant process. Since that time, David and the SunEdison team have worked closely together to bring the project to fruition
The solar power plant is financed in part by an AUD $ 2.3 million grant from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA). The project received funding because of its alignment with ARENA’s objectives of reducing the cost and boosting uptake of renewable energy in Australia. The use of CPT will answer questions regarding how the technology can make solar generation cheaper.
“It will be the first time cloud predictive technology has been used on a solar PV installation of this size connected to a network,” said ARENA CEO Ivor Frischknecht.
“Because clouds can lead to a sudden drop in solar output, commercial solar power generation on a smaller network usually has costly storage requirements to ‘smooth out’ supply into the grid. Employing CPT reduces the need for this buffer, meaning solar generation can be installed and operated more cheaply.”
Construction is targeted for completion in the second quarter of 2016.
Ongoing operation and maintenance of the facility will be performed by Energy Matters.
Karratha is located approximately 1,535 kilometres north of Perth and 850 kilometres south of Broome. The area has significant solar resources, with solar irradiation levels averaging 6.62 kWh/sq m/day.
Currently, there are 214 solar PV installations in Karratha, totaling 663.40 kW of capacity.
Karratha Airport is Western Australia’s second busiest airport; providing the vital air link to the Pilbara region with multiple daily services from Perth, twice-weekly flights to Broome and weekly services to Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
