1. Developing Mid-scale Solar for Council
Heading one Heading two Date
Developing Mid-scale Solar for Council
Energy and Resource Management
May 2017
Adam Clarke – Newcastle City Council
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2. 2020 Carbon and Water MAP 30% Reduction in Council’s electricity usage
By 2020 Newcastle City Council will achieve:
30% Reduction in Council’s electricity usage
30% of NCC electricity supplied from low carbon sources
Like most Council’s we have a number of carbon reduction targets and objectives and for Newcastle Council the 2020 Carbon and Water management action plan which was developed in sets out goals such as a 30% reduction in electricity usage and a 30% renewable energy target.
Having had a strong focus on energy efficiency in the intervening years we are well on track with electricity reduction and our now turning our efforts towards increasing renewable energy generation.
Newcastle City Council scope 1 emissions breakdown baseline year 2008/09

3. Reaching Our Renewable Targets
Annually we use around 14.1GWh and half of this is from streetlighting. Excluding street lighting our large sites account for around 2/3 of electricity use and that’s where we started our renewable energy push, with our first rooftop PV system of just over 90kW installed in 2012 at the Council depot.

4. Renewable Energy Systems
LOCATION
System size (kW)
Electricity generated (kWh) pa
War Memorial Cultural Centre
44.28
64,000
Regional Art Gallery
86.25
124,000
Wallsend Library
80.08
115,000
No.1 Sportsground
10.2
14,800
No.2 Sportsground
20.16
30,000
New Lambton Library
9.9
14,300
City Works Depot
91.26
132,600
Newcastle Regional Museum
99.75
146,200
Summerhill Small Wind Turbine
2.5
1400
TOTAL
444.38kW
642,300kWh
Since then we continued with a further 7 installations of rooftop systems to total around 450kW of installed PV.
With the exception of a few more large sites and some smaller rooftop systems, we've essentially reached capacity for large Roof-top PV and it quickly became clear that if we were to achieve anywhere near our renewable energy targets it would require looking at megawatt scale systems

5. Newcastle Council Summerhill Landfill
Having assessed a number of locations we settled on an area of closed landfill at our waste facility and undertook a detailed feasibility study to investigate ground conditions, concept layout designs and network connection studies.
Landfill solar makes sense to us for a numberr of reasons:
It is close to existing electrical infrastructure and road networks
It is a secure operational site, out of public view with open, unshaded areas
It generates revenue from land that has very little re-use options and supports a longer term closure plan for the site
And while this particular cell is not methanegenic, it supports the development and creation of a renewable energy hub where we already have a 2.2MW landfill gas to electricity plant operating.
While there are some technical challenges to overcome in terms of the footing design, we found that the advantages well and truly outweighed any potential downsides.

6. Council is Committed to Electricity Spend
By necessity Council is a big electricity user
Key to providing core service offering
Committed to electricity spend of $Xm over 30 years
Solar is an alternative option in spending that capital
Plan to offset equivalent amount of Council load
The question is not if, but how Council choose to use Capital
Therefore a cost replacement Project
In starting to introduce the project within the organisation, it became important to distinguish that this was not an investment project for Council.

7. Very different to a Commercial Project
Council would be it’s own customer
Removes margin and credit risk
Council owns the site
Not a selective use of capital
Council is committed to spend $Xm - not a choice
Council has:
Sub commercial borrowing costs
No excess return requirement
A longer term view than a commercial player
Council values economic, social and environmental benefits
Net saving on annual electricity cost from year 1
Self financing with zero rate payer impact
Scope to be cashflow positive from year 1
Even allowing for debt cost
Drive a number of policy aims
Leverage the environmental and social positives
Strong land re-use story
Engage schools/community on the environmental positives
Stronger academic ties with on-site research

8. Range of Capital Costs and cost of Electricity
On the strength of the Feasibility study we moved to an Expression of Interest stage to market test our assumptions and from that received 18 proposal.
The process really confirmed that we were well within the range on the modelling we’d undertaken and also provided some pretty hard to ignore facts around just how much the levelised cost of renewable energy had dropped. It’s something that requires constant revision to the keep the business case

9. Lifetime project savings above repayment costs
The information from the EOI also allowed us to further refine our business case and undertake detailed simluations of the potential financial returns, revealing very little downside risk

10. Tipping Point well and truly reached
NSW Electricity prices more than doubled in last 12 months
When we started developing the project, I could count on one hand the number of Megawatt scale solar systems in Australia. This year there are now 20 under construction or at financial commitment, equating to something like 2GW of extra capacity.
With huge declines not just in equipment but also EPC costs, and the phenomenal increase in wholesale electricity prices, its no wonder the investment wave has finally broken and the gold rush is underway

11. Impact of Summerhill Project towards targets
 Returning to the initial drivers of environmental targets, they’ve really become an added benefit to some significant ongoing budgetary savings that can be achieved through generating renewable energy. The Summerhill landfill project in particular will get us to over a 50% renewable energy offset and when combined with an upgrade of Council-wide streetlighting to LED we start to achieve:
 increases in renewable energy (up to 81.43%);
reduction in Council carbon emissions (up to 68.73% ;
reduction in Council electricity usage (up to 38.39%), and;
With millions in ongoing budgetary savings (up to $2m annually)
And all achievable within an 18 month timeframe.