Hydro Tas to deliver off-grid renewables solution for Coober Pedy

After a start to the year it would no doubt rather forget, Hydro Tasmania has revealed that technologies the utility developed for the King Island Renewable Energy Integration Project will be used to help transform the remote, off-grid South Australian township of Coober Pedy into a majority renewable energy powered community.

Hydro Tasmania said on Monday it had been engaged by the Coober Pedy project developer Energy Developments Limited (EDL) to help shift the mining town from costly and polluting diesel power to a system powered mostly by solar and wind.

Hydro Tas CEO Steve Davy said the project demonstrated the huge success of the King Island project (KIREIP) and growing commercial interest in the ARENA-funded technology it had used.

“We’re going to see world-leading Tasmanian innovation and technology used to transform a remote town in the Australian desert into a renewable energy oasis,” Davy said in a statement on Monday.

“Only Hydro Tasmania has demonstrated that unique ability at megawatt scale, and Australia and the world are increasingly taking notice.”

Davy said Hydro Tas would employ local manufacturing suppliers to fulfil the Coober Pedy contract, which would inject several million dollars into the Tasmanian economy.

“With our off-grid successes on King Island and developments underway at ARENA supported projects on Flinders and Rottnest Islands, plus Coober Pedy to come, Tasmania’s future as a provider of these energy solutions to the global market is extremely bright,” he said.

Under the contract, Tas Hydro will supply EDL with its proprietary enabling technology, including control, load management and storage systems.

Once the technology is in place, the town of about 3500 people is expected to draw an average of 70 per cent of its energy from renewables – 100 per cent under favourable conditions.

The ambitious project has been in the works for a couple of years now, made possible by grant funding to EDL of up to $18.4 million by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.

At the time, EDL – which currently supplies power to Coober Pedy via a 3.9MW diesel power station – proposed integrating 2MW of solar PV, 3MW of wind, and a 2MW, 750kWh battery storage set up.

And back then, ARENA CEO Ivor Frischknecht noted that the project represented an opportunity for Hydro Tas to evolve its KIRIEP technology for use on the mainland and in outback communities with few alternative energy options.

As we reported here, Hydro Tasmania’s ARENA-funded $18.25 King Island Renewable Energy Integration Project (KIREIP) prototype off-grid power plant combining solar panels, wind turbines and energy storage technology has been a great success.

Not only has it achieved its goals of reducing the Bass Strait island’s reliance on diesel fuel, cutting its energy costs by $4.5 million a year, and providing around 60 per cent of its energy needs from renewables, it has managed to achieve 100 per cent renewables for King Island on a number of occasions.

Speaking this week about Coober Pedy, Frischknecht described it as a “next-generation off-grid project” that would take advantage of advanced renewable and enabling technologies deployed and  trialled by Hydro Tas across three different projects with $16.3 million in total ARENA funding support.

“Combining wind, solar, battery storage and smart control systems could provide a blueprint for off-grid communities to access cleaner and cheaper power and achieve energy independence by greatly reducing their reliance on trucked-in diesel,” Frischknecht said

“We’re committed to working with Hydro Tasmania to share the learning from its projects, maximising the benefits from ARENA funding and accelerating the rollout of renewable energy in remote Australia.”

The project is also a ringing endorsement of ARENA’s grants-based approach to funding the development of innovative renewable energy technology, which risks being lost if the Coalition wins the July election.