
05 September 2024
Beyond the road trains and cotton farms in far northern New South Wales is a solar farm soaked in sunshine and beaming about 13,500 megawatt (MW) hours per year of clean, renewable energy, or enough electricity to power more than 2,300 homes for the next 30 years.
Located in Boggabilla, just south of the Queensland town of Goondiwindi, Latitude Solar Farm is a community-driven project initiated by the Byron Bay community in response to a strong desire to build an innovative solar farm. The project was supported by a $3.5 million grant awarded through the NSW Government’s Regional Community Energy Fund.
The site sits on the same latitude as Byron Bay and was chosen for its network access and suitability in terms of scale and availability.
The innovative 20,000-panel solar farm has the first battery energy storage system (BESS) connected to the Essential Energy distribution network, with the inverter that converts up to 4.99 MW of solar photovoltaic (PV) energy being one of the first in Australia.
Essential Energy Major Network Connections Customer Manager, Michael McLean says the BESS stores excess solar energy generated during the day and releases it into the electricity grid during times of high-power demand.
“As a result, grid stability will be improved and more stable power will be supplied into homes and businesses across regional NSW,” Michael says.
“As the first battery energy storage system on the Essential Energy network, our connections planning team worked very closely with Latitude Solar Farm to build a process in which we could safely approve and connect this solar farm to the network.
“Some of these projects can take anywhere from two to six years to complete. This project took three years from preliminary inquiry to energisation, so we had a coordinator working closely with the Latitude team.”
The system’s four batteries sit in air-conditioned shipping containers between 22-28 degrees Celsius. Each battery stores 2.75-megawatt hour (MWh) of energy making 11MWh in total, while having the separate batteries allow for constant operation if there’s an issue.
Each storage unit has a fire suppression system with a constant monitoring of each cell, which is rated to 50-deg C.
Another innovative feature of the system is the substructure which allows installers to place solar panels on a simple steel frame and secure them with an Allen key, keeping deployment costs down. The framing technology uses less steel and concrete than many traditional solar farms which helps reduce embodied carbon content of the end-to-end project.
“Once the solar farm is decommissioned, we can simply pull it down and leave little, if any, trace. It's just basically a Meccano set you put together and make it all work,” Latitude Solar Farm site manager Peter Mailler explains.
Importantly, he says there has been excellent community support for the solar farm.
“Community sentiment was a big determining factor and because of its minimal footprint, most people don’t know it’s here.
“That's really a testament to how well it's working. But the reality is it's just here doing its job. It's quiet, it's pretty innocuous and it works really well and has actually improved the power supply over time.”
Latitude Solar Farm project director, Craig Johnston says their philosophy was to let the project show for itself how it could be a driver of carbon reduction.
“Community energy projects can be delivered in a very, very tangible way,” Craig says. “What is required is commitment and dedication, energy and expertise. The project developers worked with very, very experienced developers, as well as working with Essential Energy because of course they own and manage the network and they've been an extremely valuable support for this project.”
“I think it’s been a fantastic outcome for everybody and there's been some great learnings in there for all involved.”
Latitude Solar Farm project team with Essential Energy Major Network Connections team members.