Dubbo farmer turns super into solar power

Tom Warren, South Keswick, Dubbo, talks about his micro-grid solar farm.

Transcript

00:00I'm standing at my mini solar farm.

00:05The mini solar farm is 100 kilowatts in capacity.

00:09And it was built purely as an investment for me,

00:15out of my superannuation fund money.

00:18It cost, at that point in time, about $120,000.

00:23And at that point in time, the feed-in tariff,

00:27or the FIT, was quite good.

00:30That's gone down over time.

00:32But now we are getting a market operator

00:37who sells the energy at wholesale.

00:40And that's through a company in Melbourne.

00:44And the return in the longer term for the facility has been,

00:50and still remains, about 10% of the original investment.

00:55So it is quite good, and continues to be quite good.

00:59This is the Dubbo solar farm.

01:01We're only a couple of kilometres out of Dubbo to the east.

01:05The size of this plant produces up to about 20 megawatts power.

01:11And it supplies power directly to the grid in South Dubbo.

01:16It powers a large percentage if you've got more South Dubbo

01:20that comes from the South Dubbo substation during a sunny day.

01:24So therefore there's very little energy required from any other source for most of it.

01:29There's about 64,500 panels here on this particular site.

01:36And it's 50 odd hectares of land.

01:41At least in those in cities will be installed.

01:42And it has been a great idea to have a thing.

01:43So just to come into the near the surface of the river,

01:44then it's 15,000 feet.

01:45And then it's 15,000 feet.

01:46So we've done a little economic.

01:47And then it's 20,000 feet.

01:48I'm at a very close.

01:50So we had a pair of spoons and hurdle where we are.

01:51And it's 2,000 feet.

01:52It's 25,000 feet.

01:53It's 25,000 feet.

01:54It's 25,000 feet.

01:56So we have to go along with our aircraft.

01:57So we see our spacecraft.

01:58And we have to walk through it up there.

01:59So we have to go along with some amazing aircraft.

02:01And we just have to walk through it up there.