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A community-owned Canberra solar farm is set to be powered up next month, with construction set to be completed early in the new year. Upon completion the farm will provide power to the equivalent of 260 households in Canberra, via solar energy that is fed into the electricity grid. Construction of the farm was funded by the Canberra community who poured $2.4 million into the project. About 550 Canberrans paid to own a share into the Majura farm. The farm is the brainchild of renewable investment energy fund SolarShare. It is the company’s first project. Construction on the farm started in August and it is almost two-thirds completed, SolarShare chairman Nick Fejer said. “We are delighted with the progress of our farm,” he said. “In three months we are at the point where we’re at 60 per cent of all the complex mechanical development completed.” Alongside community funding, SolarShare received a loan of $800,000 from renewable energy developer CWP Renewables. It was also given support by the ACT government – the farm will receive subsidies known as feed-in tariffs from the ACT government over a 20-year period. The project was part of the 2012-16 Labor-Greens Parliamentary Agreement to advance community-owned solar. IN OTHER NEWS: The farm is being built by Epho Commercial Solar. While construction will take less than six months, the project has been eight years in the making. “It’s been an incredible community that has come together to make this project a reality,” SolarShare founder and principal executive officer Lawrence McIntosh said. “There has been a lot of volunteer time, a lot of community investors [and] a lot of beautiful local Canberra companies that have all been involved in creating what we see on the ground today.”
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A community-owned Canberra solar farm is set to be powered up next month, with construction set to be completed early in the new year.
Upon completion the farm will provide power to the equivalent of 260 households in Canberra, via solar energy that is fed into the electricity grid.
Construction of the farm was funded by the Canberra community who poured $2.4 million into the project.
The farm is the brainchild of renewable investment energy fund SolarShare. It is the company’s first project.
“We are delighted with the progress of our farm,” he said.
“In three months we are at the point where we’re at 60 per cent of all the complex mechanical development completed.”
It was also given support by the ACT government – the farm will receive subsidies known as feed-in tariffs from the ACT government over a 20-year period. The project was part of the 2012-16 Labor-Greens Parliamentary Agreement to advance community-owned solar.
The farm is being built by Epho Commercial Solar.
While construction will take less than six months, the project has been eight years in the making.
“It’s been an incredible community that has come together to make this project a reality,” SolarShare founder and principal executive officer Lawrence McIntosh said.
“There has been a lot of volunteer time, a lot of community investors [and] a lot of beautiful local Canberra companies that have all been involved in creating what we see on the ground today.”
