Longreach Airport goes solar

Longreach Airport is taking advantage of Central West Queensland’s long sunlight hours and high summer temperatures with the installation of a solar panel system. Mount Isa-based company Q Energy Solutions installed the 396 Trina Solar TSM-250 PC05A solar panel system in 18 strings of 22 panels.

“It operates through SMA Sunny Tripower SMA STP25000TL-30 inverters, which gives zero export functionality through active power limitation and protection relay to meet Ergon utility connection requirements,” said Q Energy Solutions Director Matt Brewster. “This means the inverters ramp up and down their output to match the site load and no power feeds back into the Ergon network.

“The terminal roof is flat and we designed the system to utilise as much area as we could to achieve the maximum result of 205,485 kWh per annum.

“This more than satisfies the current peak load of 68 kW during the hours of 9 am and 5 pm seven days a week, with three commercial ducted air conditioners consuming most of the power.”

Kevin Gill, chief operating officer of Longreach Airport, said the company was motivated by a desire to drive a social responsibility agenda by installing the system. Gill said the airport expects the system to fulfil 95% of its daytime energy requirements, save $30,000 to $40,000 a year off its power bill and, most importantly, to cut CO₂ emissions by 184.9 tonnes.

“Our current annual energy cost from the coal-generated grid is between $40,000 to $50,000, but the installation cost of our solar system is into six figures,” said Gill. “So even with the considerable financial saving, it will take a number of years to recoup the cost.

“But to us, the real winner is the environment as we are focused on sustainability.”