290 solar panels are to be installed on the Gold Museum at Ballarat, Victoria’s iconic tourist spot, Sovereign Hill.
The Gold Museum Solar Energy Project was officially launched yesterday by Victoria’s Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, Lily D’Ambrosio. Minister D’Ambrosio said the system will have a capacity of 75.4kW and significantly reduce Sovereign Hill’s overall carbon emissions.
The solar panels will generate enough electricity to power the Museum as well as feed surplus electricity back into the grid.
“Congratulations to Sovereign Hill for their leadership and the example they are setting for the rest of the business community,” said Minister D’Ambrosio.
“This project has not only reduced the museum’s carbon footprint, but also contributes towards a changing attitude within the broader private sector.”
‘Being green’ is a key focus at Sovereign Hill. It participates in the Waste Wise Program and a Federal Government Community Water Grant enabled the site to harvest rainwater from rooftops into a series of tanks connected by a gravity-fed underground water spine.
Sovereign Hill was a 2015 Qantas Australia National Tourism Awards winner (Major Tourist Attraction) and winner of the 2015 RACV Victorian Tourism Awards in RACV People’s Choice for Favourite Regional Attraction Experience and Victoria’s Major Tourist Attraction categories. The destination attracts nearly 500,000 visitors each year, including around 110,000 school children.
Sovereign Hill transports visitors back in time to Ballarat’s frenetic first decade after the discovery of gold in the area 1851. The second-largest gold nugget in the world, the Welcome Nugget, was found at Ballarat’s Red Hill mine. It weighed a whopping 69 kilograms.
While nuggets may be harder to come by now, another valuable resource is increasingly being “mined” in Ballarat – the power of the sun.
There are approximately 2,191 solar power systems in Ballarat, totaling 7190.86 kW of capacity. Ballarat’s postcode, 3350, receives solar irradiation levels of around 4.06 kilowatt hours per square metre daily.
Ballarat is also home to the world’s first rooftop solar thermal air-conditioning system, developed by CSIRO and funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).
Nugget replica image credit: By Anatoli Lvov – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19416224
