Two of the hottest towns in the country are making the most of their sunshine through a world-first technology.
Nullagine and Marble Bar in the East Pilbara, which regularly experience scorching temperatures, are home to solar-diesel power stations.
Marble Bar resident Sue Owens says the system, which was installed by Horizon Power just over a year ago, has been a saving grace.
“If we have a power interruption at night time we can’t sleep because we have no air conditioners,” she said.
She says the technology has helped reduce outages.
“Previously with just diesel we did have interruptions,” she said.
“It all depended on how hot it was; people would use more power and we would run out of diesel, it would only be 15 or 20 minutes but it was an interruption.”
Horizon’s senior engineer David Edwards says the state-of-the-art power stations combine diesel and solar power technology.
“The technology used in those stations prefers renewable energy,” he said.
“So, what that does is when the sun is shining it will make sure that the maximum amount of solar energy will go into the town’s network by lowering the amount of diesel generation.
“Then, at the end of the day or perhaps when a cloud comes along and obscures the sun, it ramps the diesel generation back up again so that the town sees a continuous supply, but it prefers to deliver renewable energy first.”
The Member for the Pilbara, Tom Stephens, says he would like to see, in time, the technology rolled out in other remote communities where power outages occur.
“People in the very remote communities and tiny towns of regional WA are dependent upon the reliable power supply for access to the internet, purchasing items, maintaining a refrigeration unit, providing power source for school communities, the nursing post, police facilities,” he said.
He says many remote communities are regularly cut off from their diesel supply.
“That puts an extra reason why you might put this type of hybrid technology at the disposal of remote places to increase their reliability when roads are out, the waters are up, the bridges can’t be crossed, and the diesel can’t get in.
“It’s expensive up front, but increasing use of this technology and rolling it out more widely creates medium to longer term benefit, not only in terms of reducing costs associated with the generation of power through diesel but also the cost to the environment that diesel represents.”
World first
Mr Edwards says before the systems were installed there were more outages in the towns.
“There was an average of about 38 minutes worth of outages a year in Marble Bar and about 110 minutes [a year] of outages in Nullagine,” he said.
“But, since the new stations have been put in, the outages in Marble Bar have been reduced to 8 minutes [a year] and there haven’t been any interruptions in Nullagine so far.”
He says the stations have scored the title of ‘world-first’.
“There haven’t been any since,” he said.
“I know a couple of companies are looking at what we have done and they are developing their own technologies but at the moment they are still the world’s first solar diesel hybrid stations.”
They’re also the largest single axis tracking arrays in Australia.
The systems generate more than 1000 MWh of renewable energy per year, which is 30 per cent of the towns’ annual energy demand.
Horizon says since the stations’ commissioning, the atmosphere has been spared 950 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions as a result of the solar power being generated.
Residents are clearly noticing a difference.
Ms Owens says she’s very impressed and would recommend the technology to anyone.
“I reckon every suburb, every town in Australia should have one, we have the sun, use it,” she said.
She says the station in Marble Bar is also proving to be a popular tourist attraction.
“Last year, it was a really big hit with the tourists, they are blown away with it, the size of it, the scale, and that being in Marble Bar in the middle of whoop whoop, we have such fantastic technology.”
Location, location, location
Mr Edwards says Horizon Power chose the East Pilbara as the preferred destination for the new technology because existing facilities were nearing their expiry date.
“The old stations were coming to the end of their life, they were more than 30 years old and they needed replacing and so we decided we wanted to do something a bit special and more sustainable,” he said.
He says the climate was also a drawcard.
“They are the hottest towns in Australia, they have an enormous number of days over 36 degrees, it’s a very hot place so perfect for solar,” he said.
Mr Stephens agrees the old stations needed a major upgrade.
“It was very much a technology of a bygone area when life moved more slowly and people were more patient with the loss of power supply,” he said.
But, what of the future?
Horizon says the State Government has recently announced $15.5 million in funding for it to build stage one of a solar-diesel power station at CSIRO’s Murchison Radio-astronomy observatory which will provide power for a world-class scientific facility in regional WA.
Mr Edwards says they could pop up elsewhere.
“Horizon Power has decided to leverage all the things we have learned from those power stations into new Indigenous communities and remote power supplies we have coming up in future projects,” he said.
“So, they are sort of a benchmark for the sort of thing we want to achieve in future projects.
“They have far exceeded our expectations, we set a fairly conservative limit of how much solar energy we wanted to get into the networks and we have far exceeded that, they have been very reliable they look great so all around winner, I think.
