Climate Change Strategy Phase 1: MidCoast Council
8.4.2 Mid-scale renewable energy build by MidCoast Council
Description
An option available to MidCoast Council is to build its own mid-scale renewable energy plant on land it owns. Power generated would be exported to the grid, and Council could then purchase this electricity (and LGCs) via a licensed retailer or could simply take the grid spot price as income and retire or sell LGCs depending on its income and/or abatement goals. This arrangement is like projects developed in recent years by Sunshine Coast Council (15 MW solar farm at Valdora generates electricity equivalent to all of Council’s needs) and City of Newcastle (5MW Summerhill landfill solar farm meets ~30-40% of Council’s electricity needs). A key aspect to note in these projects is that Council can’t simply ‘allocate’ the renewable energy generated to its sites. If it wants to offset its regular power use with power from its own renewable energy plant, it must do so via a licensed retailer as an intermediary. Like a PPA that is negotiated for supply from remote / non-Council projects, developing a mid-scale project is a complex undertaking and requires assessment of a range of aspects, such as design, connection agreements, EPC and O&M contracts, ownership models, and the development of retail agreements to supply the power to Council. Community involvement in the ownership and/or purchasing of clean energy from the project could also be considered. The following graphs below show the aggregated load profile in weekday, weekend and holiday for all large sites with interval data. Weekday combined load profiles for MidCoast Council’s large sites
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