Summerhill solar farm commences construction.

Posted on November 12, 2018 by Mike — No Comments ↓

The 5MW Summerhill solar farm will officially commence construction tomorrow – the farm will be located at the former Wallsend Borehole Colliery.

Summerhill solar farm

All the renewable energy created by the Summerhill solar farm will be owned by the Newcastle City Council who will then be approximately 50% powered by renewable energy.

Carnegie’s wholly owned subsidiary Energy Made Clean and JV partner Lendlease have been awarded the design and construction of the project, according to PV Magazine. It’ll be built on top of the former Wallsend Borehole Colliery. Read more about the tender here.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the solar plant’s cost is around $8m, with $6.5m of this provided in the form of a loan by the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

Initial modelling shows that this plant will save around $350,000 per annum, also noting that the city council’s cost of electricity has double over the past few years – making this a very attractive option to help offset the highly volatile wholesale price of electricity. It’s listed as ‘battery ready’ according to the Altenergy website.

Nuatali Nelmes, the Lord Mayor of Newcastle, discussed the project in a media statement:

“The solar farm will produce enough energy to run the equivalent of all of our council facilities during the day, which represents significant environmental returns for ratepayers and millions of dollars in savings on electricity costs,” Mayor Nelmes said.

Further discussion shows that, although financial ramifications are very important, the eco-friendly nature of the project was ‘more than just money’:

“While cost savings are certainly a critical factor in our decision to build the solar farm, sustainability initiatives are about more than just money and our community expects us to be good environmental stewards,” Ms Nelmes continued.

This is a fantastic attitude and we look forward to seeing how well the SUmmerhill solar farm performs for the Newcastle City Council. More top news for council solar, which has been growing in leaps and bounds over the last 18 months.

Read some more articles about council solar below!

Carnegie raises $5.3 million for solar, battery, wave

Posted on May 24, 2018 by Mike — No Comments ↓

Carnegie Clean Energy, a clean energy company based in Perth, have raised $5.3 million for improvements and investments in its solar, battery, and wave energy businesses.

Carnegie Clean Energy Funding Round

The raised funds will be invested into working capital so Carnegie is able to complete its existing projects which include wave, solar, and battery storage microgrid projects. The extra money will ‘further develop its contract and project pipelines, and to further expand the business’, according to RenewEconomy.

Carnegie’s CEO Michael Ottoviano has been in the press a lot lately and made some comments after the successful funding round:

“We thank our shareholders for their support in the capital raise,” he said.

“We will now use this new capital and our existing funds to accelerate our businesses towards financial sustainability.”

“We have achieved this at a time when this sector is at the start of a period of rapid growth. Our ability to be innovative both technically and commercially creates the opportunity to accelerate the growth our business to achieve and sustain profitable ongoing operations within the next 12-24 months.”

Dr.Ottoviano was quoted last year discussing the increasing competitiveness of renewables:

“We are fielding an increasing number of opportunities that historically were performed by diesel or gas turbines, for which battery systems are now increasingly competitive. The CCE battery solution offers faster response time, lower operating cost, no greenhouse gas pollution, and silent operation.”

Carnegie have also been responsible for some huge solar projects in Australia (which are in various states of progress), namely:

A 2MW, 500kWh Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) at the General Motors Holden site in Elizabeth, South Australia.
A 10MW ‘battery ready’ solar farm in Northam.
The Kalbarri microgrid.
The Garden Island microgrid.

The company was founded in 1987 as Carnegie Wave Energy but has since expanded and renamed itself after purchasing solar and battery microgrid developer Energy Made Clean. Click here to visit the Carnegie website.

Keep an eye on CCE on the ASX! Current price is at $0.032 as per InvestSmart.

Newcastle Solar Farm Grant – CEFC

Posted on March 8, 2018 by Mike — No Comments ↓

Newcastle Solar Farm grant – the Newcastle City Council has received $6.5m from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to help pay for the 5MW solar farm to be built in Australia’s coal heartland. It’s fantastic to see them start to transition to clean energy, especially to see funding for the project for public access buildings and other council administrations.

Newcastle Solar Farm Grant

We first wrote about the $8m Newcastle Solar Farm in February when it was purchased by Carnegie Clean Energy’s fully owned subsidiary Energy Made Clean. The design phase has started and plant commissioning is expected to be at the end of Q3 2018.

The CEO of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), Nutali Nelmes, talked about how Newcastle council will be able to use the power for their complexes and move towards the future with regards to clean/renewable energy:

“Councils across Australia administer a vast network of streetlights, community centres, libraries, sport and recreation facilities and other public access buildings,” he said.

“Newcastle is leading the way in financing a solar farm through the CEFC to help it manage the energy costs of these facilities.

“We encourage other councils to also invest in clean energy, which can free up council finance for other community-enhancing projects while locking in longstanding environmental and economic benefits for their communities.”

According to Newcastle Lord Mayor Nutali Nelmes, the Newcastle City Council are planning to cut electricity usage by 30% within 2 years:

“I’d like to thank the Clean Energy Finance Corporation for its incredible support of the City of Newcastle’s sustainability charter,” he was quoted as saying on the Newcastle City Council website.

“We are building sustainability into everything we do after reiterating our commitment last year to generate 30 per cent of our electricity needs from low-carbon sources and cut overall electricity usage by 30 per cent by 2020.

Newcastle solar farm to go ahead – Carnegie

Posted on February 15, 2018 by Mike — No Comments ↓

Carnegie Clean Energy, who last week announced they will be building both the Kalbarri microgrid and the Kalgoorlie solar farm, have had another win today as their fully owned subsidiary Energy Made Clean won a tender to build and operate a $7m, 5MW Newcastle solar farm.

Newcastle Solar Farm

According to a press released they issued yesterday, Carnegie Clean Energy won the tender to install the PV solar + storage facility on a capped, former landfill site at the Summerhill Waste Management Centre in Newcastle. The project forms part of Newcastle Council’s plan to cut emissions by 30% by 2020 as part of the Renewable Energy Target.

Carnegie’s Managing Director, Dr Michael Ottaviano (feels like we’ve been quoting him every day lately!) said, “We are delighted to have won our first utility scale solar farm project in NSW and our first to be connected in the National Electricity Market. This project brings the value of new contracted work for our joint venture to over $30m over the past 2 months.”

The Newcastle solar farm will be installed as a ground mounted fixed tilt system. It’ll have an optimised piling system so as to benefit as much as possible from the site topology and it’ll be modular – they are preparing for the future addition of a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS). Carnegie have stated that the design phase has already commenced and plant commissioning is expected at the end of Q3 this year.

Energy Made Clean “specialises in the delivery of mixed renewable energy microgrid projects to islands and remote and fringe of grid communities” and Carnegie is the “only company in the world to offer a combination of wave, solar, wind, battery storage and desalination via microgrids” – so it’ll be really interesting to see what their future plans are now that they have some big projects to work on!

Kalbarri microgrid: Carnegie to build.

Posted on February 9, 2018 by Mike — No Comments ↓

The long awaited Kalbarri microgrid will be built this year and launched in 2019, as Renewable energy developer Carnegie Clean Energy have signed a $6.8 million contract with state-owned Western Power to build a 5MW Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) in the area.

Kalbarri Microgrid

According to the contract, Carnegie’s subsidiary Energy Made Clean will be teaming up with JV partner Lendlease services to build the sustainable energy storage system. It will be able to generate 4.5MWh and a minimum of 2MWh will always be accessible for backup services.

The BESS facility will have two different modes – “Island Mode”, and “Grid Mode”, with the former allowing operation independent of the electricity grid. Grid mode will do what it says on the tin – helping provide network stabilisation for voltage and frequency to other generation sources.

Carnegie Clean Energy CEO Dr Michael Ottaviano was ecstatic about winning the contract:

“We’re excited to have won an extremely competitive, global tender using the latest in storage and control technologies. This reinforces Carnegie’s leadership in the design and delivery of innovative energy solutions in Australia,” he said.

“(this) contract award comes just over 12 months after the establishment of the EMC/Lendlease JV which has secured $25m in orders in the last 4 weeks with Kalbarri and our Northam Solar Farm. With tender cycles running in excess of 12 months, and a clear focus on delivery of high-value projects for utility grade customers, we are just starting to see the results of our hard work over the past year.” Mr Ottaviano continued.

West Australian Energy Minister Ben Wyatt also spoke of the BESS microgrid in Kalbarri and how it is a “game changer” for communities “…subject to environmental factors that can cause outages. The improved reliability for the region will boost the local tourism and retail operations, as well as enhance the lifestyle of residents.”

The latest Australian solar news and deals for the industrial, commercial and residential sectors.

Energy Made Clean

Summerhill solar farm commences construction.