Feature: Short of electricity supply? Aussie couple turns to solar

By Levi J Parsons

SYDNEY, Dec. 19 (Xinhua) -- With rising power costs, regular blackouts and little support from energy providers or governing bodies, one Aussie couple decided to build their own solar farm and supply their entire outback region with electricity.

Covering an area around 65,000 square kilometers, the Gulf of Carpentaria Shire sits in the far north of Australia, in the northwest corner of Queensland State.

But in such a large, isolated area, electricity supply across the region had become a major concern for locals, so Doug and Lyn Scouller took matters into their own hands.

"I'm an electrician by trade and I came to the realisation that our power actually comes all the way from Rockhampton, which is about 1,800 kilometers away, and that's a hell of a long way to get power up here!" Doug Scouller explained to Xinhua.

"The longer the extension lead, the less power you get at the end of it, so we had a lot of problems with supply."

"You could be sitting here bathed in beautiful sunshine, but there could be a storm 400-500 kilometers away and the power cuts out on you!"

With losses of up to 50 percent occurring in the line, the Scoullers noticed their overheads increasing dramatically at the couple's four star hotel complex they'd been operating in the township of Karumba.

They discovered almost all of the increased costs were due to surging electricity prices.

"There was so many loses and it occurred to me that somebody had to pay for that and I realised that they were lumping all of those loses onto the consumer," Scouller said.

"So I thought why not put a generator out here?"

"If we have a load of about five megawatts with a solar farm, that could handle the load then there would be no need for any power coming in and we would reduce the losses to zero and reduce the pressure on prices."

With the facility now up and running for over one week, Scouller said that building the 16,000-panel farm was actually the easiest part of the entire process.

Australia's large banks and other major commercial lenders were highly sceptical of the project and unwilling to offer any financial support.

But when the world's third largest solar firm, Canadian Solar Inc, came on board, the international push boosted the credibility of the innovative concept and the Federal Government's Australian Renewable Energy Agency granted the Normanton Solar Farm 6.5 million U.S. dollars in funding.

From there, a number of other organisations joined and the project was built for a total of 10.7 million U.S. dollars.

"It's big country up here, the nearest town is about 400 kilometers away, so everything is done over long distances in this community," Scouller said.

"So basically we can supply the whole Shire from the townships of Normanton and Karumba, there are feeder lines that go out towards Burketown, up towards Yagoona and down towards Cloncurry."

But the work is not over yet for the Scouller's, when the idea was first imagined, battery storage technology was in its infancy, but over the years however, innovation within the sector has gone ahead in leaps and bounds.

"We did design our main control room to retrofit battery storage later on," Scouller explained.

"So that's one thing we're looking at straight away and that will help a lot with the network service providers because they will feel a bit more comfortable once they know you've got storage."

Scouller hopes his ingenuity and determination will help inspire state governments down under to be more open to new ideas and think outside the box when it comes to regional areas.

"I think that would be a great help to other communities in similar situations," he said.

Although living in one of the world's harshest and remote landscapes surrounded by crocodiles isn't for everyone, Scouller said, "it's a land of opportunity up here, with great people and a lot of hard workers!" Enditem