Solar Power Station (1981-1993), Interpretive Sign, White Cliffs, Western NSW
Copyright - All Rights Reserved - Black Diamond Images
White Cliffs' temperatures in summer hover around the mid-40 degrees Celsius mark so in 1979, the remote, tiny town of White Cliffs in the vast far-west of New South Wales was chosen as the site of a ground-breaking Australian National University (ANU) project to show the sun could power a remote town.
At the time it was built in the 1980s, there was no rooftop solar, and certainly there were no solar mobile phone chargers — there were no mobile phones.
Bill Finney, 87, was the sole operator of the power station from 1985 until 1994.
Located about 250 kilomtres east of Broken Hill, the $1.9 million plant generated electricity from 1982 until 2005, using two different technologies.
Initially, the solar thermal power station concentrated the sun's energy to produce steam from water which was used to drive a steam engine/generator system.
In 1997 it was transformed using the latest photovoltaic (PV) technology, with the cells directly converting the concentrated sunlight to electricity.
The project was shut down in 2005. Reference
Solar Power Station (1981-1993), Interpretive Sign, White Cliffs, Western NSW
Copyright - All Rights Reserved - Black Diamond Images
White Cliffs' temperatures in summer hover around the mid-40 degrees Celsius mark so in 1979, the remote, tiny town of White Cliffs in the vast far-west of New South Wales was chosen as the site of a ground-breaking Australian National University (ANU) project to show the sun could power a remote town.
At the time it was built in the 1980s, there was no rooftop solar, and certainly there were no solar mobile phone chargers — there were no mobile phones.
Bill Finney, 87, was the sole operator of the power station from 1985 until 1994.
Located about 250 kilomtres east of Broken Hill, the $1.9 million plant generated electricity from 1982 until 2005, using two different technologies.
Initially, the solar thermal power station concentrated the sun's energy to produce steam from water which was used to drive a steam engine/generator system.
In 1997 it was transformed using the latest photovoltaic (PV) technology, with the cells directly converting the concentrated sunlight to electricity.
The project was shut down in 2005. Reference