Mixed Greens: Australia’s first solar-powered data centre almost complete

Data centre company NEXTDC is the proud owner of Australia’s largest privately-funded rooftop solar installation, after 1,575 REC 255 Peak Energy solar panels were fitted onto almost 3,000 m² of the roof at its Port Melbourne facility. The utility-scale project, built by Energy Matters, makes NEXTDC the first data centre in Australia to use solar directly for its electricity needs. The new solar system will produce 550 MWh of electricity a year, enough to power 88 Australian households every day, or 5 per cent of the electricity NEXTDC uses at the Port Melbourne site.

Energy Matters says the privately funded utility-scale rooftop PV project is a taste of things to come in Australia’s commercial solar market, as companies look to cut operational costs and carbon emissions. The NEXTDC rooftop system will deliver considerable savings on the company’s electricity bills and will reduce CO2 emissions by 670 tonnes annually and will have an energy payback on the panels of around one year. It is the latest project in the collaboration between Energy Matters and REC, just three years since REC solar panels made their debut in Australia. Since then, the two companies have supplied approximately 60MW of REC solar panels to the market, enough to power 15,000 households every day.

Making waves

Carnegie Wave Energy Ltd has made its latest progress report on its Perth Wave Energy Project which, once completed, will be Australia’s first commercial-scale CETO grid-connected wave energy system. The ASX-listed company said on Wednesday that the project was on track for delivery in either the first or second quarter of 2014, with commissioning of the system on track for second quarter, 2014.

The 2MW demonstration project off Garden Island, in Perth, is the commercial demonstration of Carnegie Wave Energy’s 100% owned CETO technology, which produce clean energy and desalinated water. Once complete, it will be the first in the world to deploy multiple wave energy machines, 11m in diameter, tethered to pumps which deliver pressurised water onshore via an underwater pipe. Carnegue Wave says the system’s CETO Unit Buoyant Actuators have been built, and internal plumbing is now underway, ahead of marine coating application.