It starts this week with the Blair St carpark closed so an ocean of shade sails can be installed across the area to protect all parks.
But MBC sales and marketing manager George Santos says that is just a small first step paving the way for the club to install solar panels across the top of the shade sails – and across the top of the main building complex in Shaw St.
Mr Santos described it as a microgrid to cut more than $250,000 a year from the club’s power bill – making a saving of at least $6.4 million over the life of the new asset.
Best of all, he said, was the 40 per cent of the club’s daily power needs will be powered by renewable energy sources and not coal-fired gas.
“The annual greenhouse gas savings just from this project will be 616.2 tonnes of CO2 and asset lifetime sees that grow to a whopping 15,418 tonnes,” Mr Santos said.
“Without wanting people to get lost in the figures, I am told that would be the equivalent of us planting more than 11,000 trees to remove the same volume of CO2 from the atmosphere, and we would need 68.75ha to do that.
“But in a nutshell, this is a winner whichever way you turn – shade for our members and their cars, shelter from winter rain, free power from the sun and that’s great for the environment; less coal-fired power, even better for the environment and a massive cut in costs for the club across 20 years and more.”
Mr Santos said the project included the installation of batteries as well, ensuring the club had just been through its last blackout.
Power blackouts are a constant threat each summer as the club is sited at the end of the local grid and vulnerable to power outages and higher demand closer to the heart of the grid.
He said the club would be registered with AER (Australian Energy Regulator) and CER (Clean Energy Regulator) as a provider of renewable electricity.
It will also make MBC one of the first NSW clubs to become a renewable energy producer to the national electricity market.
“Vellocet Clean Energy Installations has been awarded the contract and will be working with Balance Utility Solutions to design, construct and operate our microgrid,” Mr Santos added.
“The battery energy storage system (BESS) will operate as a full site uninterruptable power supply, making us independent when necessary and that’s got to be good news for everyone connected with Moama Bowling Club.
“This is a project which ticks the economic box, the environmental box and (when things go wrong in the main power grid) more criticality, no lights off at Moama Bowling Club.”
MBC last week opened a temporary carpark on the old bowling greens and the temporary fences have gone up, closing the main parking area from Monday (November 9) until December 21.
It re-opens on that day (December 21) until after the Australia Day weekend before closing again until February 17 for the Bowls Premier League televised tournament.
Most of the carpark work is scheduled to finish in March, and then the solar installation will start which could run to the end of May.
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