Image: Solar panels on the roof of the CSIRO Discovery Building at Black Mountain, after the first phase of installation earlier in 2018. CREDIT:CSIRO
CSIRO’s Black Mountain facility in the ACT, will soon be home to a newly-installed set of solar panels – 2,900 to be exact. This is a small part of the federal government agency’s larger plan to save more than $900,000 on energy bills each year.
This isn’t CSIRO’s first facility to undergo the addition of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels. More than 880 kilowatts of solar capacity has already been rolled out across Black Mountain, Armidale in NSW, Werribee in Victoria, Kensington in Western Australia and Darwin since 2016.
Earlier this year, an initial installation of 480 panels was made on the Black Mountain facility. This new installation will add about 1000 kilowatts of solar cells across the site.
In addition to this Black Mountain project, CSIRO are also planning to install 1.2 megawatts of solar PV capacity across their Pullenvale site in Queensland and Waite site in South Australia. A further 4.2 megawatts of capacity has also been proposed for additional sites in the ACT, NSW, VIC and WA.
Once these solar PV systems have been installed, they are not only expected to deliver more than $900,000 in annual savings, but also save close to 8,000 megawatt hours of energy and reduced CO2 emissions. Those emissions will be equivalent to about 7,400 tonnes each year.
The completion of these projects is expected by 2020.
This isn’t the first project CSIRO has worked on with solar PV. Their team in Newcastle have been, and are still heavily involved in the research and development of our Evergen system. In fact, most of the Evergen team are actually based at the CSIRO Energy Centre in Newcastle.
Not only in the development of the AI and machine learning algorithm, which is what learns from behaviours and over 40 data points to forecast, optimise and make decisions on the energy in your home.
They have also been instrumental in ensuring that the panels and battery hardware used in our intelligent home energy system are both the most economical and efficient products to use.
Are you ready to be part of the move to a smarter and more renewable energy future? Request a quote today.
