Water Authority: Barwon Water

The Opportunity

In 2016, Barwon Water began looking at solar PV options as part of several emissions abatement programs to reduce their carbon footprint by 5% in 2018. After thorough investigation, they chose to pursue the installation of a 1MW solar PV project at the highest energy use site, the Black Rock Water Reclamation Plant (WRP). The Black Rock WRP accounts for 39% of Barwon Water’s overall electricity use and switching to solar PV for this site will not only provide the most cost effective solution but also save 1,500 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually.

Project Scope

The scope for this project included:

• Engineering, design, supply, installation, commissioning and maintenance;
• 1MWpDW solar photovoltaic power system (solar farm);
• Provision for future expansion of the solar photovoltaic power system up to 4MW;
• Designed and engineered for the extremely corrosive coastal environment – Connewarre, Victoria;
• Monitoring and communication system for the solar farm to enable connection to the Barwon Water existing SCADA architecture;
• Improve site Power Factor to 0.95 for the entire Black Rock WRP site. Beon selected a specialised Static Var Generator system (SVG) 2x5000kVAr module, which is the first of its kind deployed in Australia; and
• Performance guarantee for, when completed, the solar farm to achieve a specific yield of ≥ 1.46 MWh/MWp per annum and a performance ratio ≥ 0.8 (weather corrected).

Our Solution

1MW ground mount solar PV designed and engineered for the corrosive coastal environment.

Installing the 1MW solar PV system will provide Barwon Water with a secure, green source of generation that matches Barwon Water’s daily load profile and hedges their risk against the rising cost of electricity. The Static Var Generator System (SVG) will improve Power Factor to 0.95 reducing demand charges and increasing equipment life.

barwonwater.vic.gov.au