Australia Post and Bird Munchies go solar at NSW HQs

Australia Post has installed a rooftop solar system at its New South Wales headquarters as part of its ‘Carbon Reduction Strategy’, which aims to slash the postal service’s energy usage, and its emissions by 25 per cent on 2000 levels by 2020.

The 284kWp system was installed at Australia Post’s StarTrack House, in Sydney’s Strawberry Hills, by Photon Energy using 1,051 Yingli Solar panels. It is forecast to produce 370MWh of electricity a year – enough to cut the building’s electricity costs by over $65,000 a year.

With limited roof space available on the building, Photon combined engineering strategies with Yingli’s high efficiency PANDA PV modules, to help maximise energy yields from the system in low light conditions like mornings, evenings or cloudy days.

Australia Post’s head of environmental sustainability, Andrew Sellick, said the company was striving to become a leader in green business by introducing clean energy and efficiency initiatives across its 1,200 facilities.

Also turning to solar to cut energy usage and costs is one of Australia’s leading manufacturers of bird seed products, the NSW-based Bird Munchies.

The company has invested in a 70kW rooftop solar system – installed by SolarMax and project partner Ygrene Energy – that will generate over 105MWh of solar power a year and is expected to save up to $25,000 a year in energy bills and shrink Bird Munchies’ carbon footprint by 104 tonnes a year.

The system, which comprises 230 x 305kW Yingli Solar solar PV panels, is also expected to deliver an internal rate of return (IRR) of 27 per cent per annum.

Tim Davaris, managing director at Ygrene Energy, said Bird Munchies was one of many manufacturing facilities in NSW’s Queanbeyan to install  solar PV to cut costs and reduce reliance on grid electricity.