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Designed and constructed by Infratec as part of a turnkey agreement, the solar farm, near the Resource Recovery Centre, began generating enough power for 175 homes in April after several months of planning and construction.

a former landfill, but that created a few challenges throughout the process of implementation. However, considering we already owned it, and it was industrially zoned, it just made sense.

“Generating solar power locally decreases power loss through transferring the electricity through the grid, and we anticipate that the power we generate will drive down local wholesale power prices which hopefully gets passed to consumers, as well as increasing profits and therefore the dividends the trust are able to pay our loyal customers.”

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And after the success of the pilot project Marlborough Lines and subsidiary Energy Marlborough are looking at the suitability of three larger sites for solar farms – including a parcel of unproductive land near Yealands Winery.

Marlborough Lines chief executive Tim Cosgrove says local power generation can lead to lower power prices, highskilled jobs and more efficient land use.

“The Taylor Park farm is a pilot project built with the view of developing our solar power infrastructure further, as we needed a full-scale project to check the viability of our plans and learn a few lessons on the way,” says Tim.

“Use as a solar farm was the highest value we could get out of that land parcel with it being

The next prospective farm in the pipeline is a section of unused land near the Yealands winery in Seddon, and Tim says that the relationship goes hand in hand with Yealands’ sustainability plans.

“The unplanted plot at Yealands shows plenty of promise –they’re eager to be a part of our solar expansion, so generating solar power next door and having them utilise this power is a great step.”

Yealands Wines GM for Sustainability Michael Wentworth is excited for the possibilities the proposed farm brings for their production goals of becoming one of the world’s most sustainable wineries.

“Currently we generate 15 to 20 percent of our power in house from our solar array and by burning bio greens. This installation means we would be able to source up to 65 percent in house renewable power generation. “We’ll not only be powering many of Marlborough’s homes and businesses with our formerly unproductive land, but anyone who knows wine knows the immense amount of heating and cooling wineries do, so being able to have a significant majority of that power generated here is huge for us.”

The Marlborough Lines team have taken lessons from their first foray in solar, and Tim hopes that the expertise gained means they’ll be able to take on future projects with in-house knowledge.

“Having our turnkey partnership with Infratec was incredibly valuable – they delivered a great project and having their expertise mitigated a lot of risks we had, but we want to be able to deliver our own projects and we’ve brought in lots of very capable people alongside our existing experienced team to that end.

“We hope that our solar expansion opens people’s eyes to alternative uses of marginal land, and we’re more than open to discussions with landowners keen on being a part of a project down the line.”