Courier Mail
18 February 2011, Page: 16
THE Sunshine Coast has been earmarked for Queensland's biggest solar farm and a bright future as a green energy producer. A development application has been lodged for a 50,000 panel solar park on former caneland at Valdora. The local firm behind the bid, Energy Parks Australia, is planning a roll out of similar facilities across the region that eventually will help cut electricity bills.
Energy Parks Australia director Jason Hague said the $40 million Valdora park would feed enough power into the grid for 2500 homes. Mr Hague, also a town planner, said the clean energy could be sold to energy providers, or retailed to individual businesses or residents. He said three or four large solar farms being established by other companies were being developed in New South Wales, while another was under construction in Western Australia. "This is the future. We are planning several more on the Sunshine Coast and believe the model could be used in other regional areas such as Ipswich, Hervey Bay and Gympie", he said.
Mr Hague said projections showed that in three or four years, green power would be the same price as "black power". From that point on, however, it would plateau while power from burning coal continued to soar. "If we want to change the way we operate and live up to the vision of being Australia's most sustainable region, we need to embrace the technology available and do so on a scale that has real impact", he said. The solar panels at Valdora will span 20ha of caneland with the surrounding 30ha rehabilitated as green space.
Sunshine Coast Council's manager of planning assessment, Michael Bismire, said the council had met with Energy Parks Australia to discuss the project and help ensure its submission was of a high quality. In another green investment coup, the State Government yesterday revealed it had attracted a leading solar manufacturing company to build a cutting edge facility on the Gold Coast.
Treasurer and Minister for Employment and Economic Development Andrew Fraser said that with the support of the Queensland Investment Incentive Scheme, Eco Kinetics would build a new plant to assemble photovoltaic modules and manufactured mounting kits at Stapylton. He said the facility, possibly the first of its kind in Australia, was set to create hundreds of jobs.
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