Things have become a lot easier for landowners to discover if their property would be suitable to host a wind or solar farm, as a new tool reveals parts of the ACT and its surrounds could be hot contenders.
Experts from the Australian National University researched and built heat maps that are accessible online, giving members of the public the opportunity to discover if their land would be suitable for major wind and solar companies to invest.
Professor Andrew Blakers from the ANU College of Engineering has been leading the project and described it as "a bottom up approach" as it's often solar and wind companies that have to reach out to landowners.
"Effectively what we've done is we've looked for places that have got good wind, good sun and most importantly, good access to high power transmission to bring the solar and wind power into the city," he said.
Transmission lines are a large part of bringing solar and wind energy to major cities such as Sydney, as they transport energy from solar and wind farms to the relevant city.
ANU PhD researcher Anna Nadolny worked with Professor Blakers on developing the software and said transmission lines are "the key to the puzzle".
"The transmissions lines join up all of the current places that generate electricity ... as a society we've put a lot of time and money into building those transmission lines, having those assets ready," she said.
"So in order to get more solar and wind online as soon as possible we should be utilising those assets."
"Even if you've got good solar and wind, the lack of access to transmission downgrades your quality and it's like building a brand new spanking suburb 100km from the freeway, it's not going to work," Professor Blakers said.
"The solar and wind farm companies know this of course, that's their professional business, but landholders don't and this tool lets individual landholders have a look at the map at really high resolution."
The maps are categorised by wind and solar, low to high cost and whether it would be overhead or underground transmission.
For the ACT and surrounding NSW towns, overhead solar has the greatest low-cost potential, represented by the red areas, with places such as Bonner, Sutton and Yass having potential.
"ACT and surrounding districts has plenty of good space to put solar farms simply because Canberra is well served by transmission," Professor Blakers said.
"Going north from the Hume highway there's just flat land galore with lots of good transmission and good solar, it's just completely unlimited."
Wind is "naturally more difficult" according to Professor Blakers, as it needs more space however "has greater impact than solar".
"Wind is really important to balance solar because the sun never shines at night and the wind often blows at night," he said.
"From Lake George up to through Crookwell, right up through to Lithgow, there's this whole band of really good wind."
The colouring of the maps indicates what areas are the lowest to highest cost for solar or wind investment, the dark red represents class A which is the cheapest, all the way to dark blue which is class E, the most expensive.
"[Owners] can see whether they've got a class A, B or C site on their property and talk to their neighbours and get together enough land for a big size, half a gigawatt solar or wind farm and then approach the solar and wind farm developers," Professor Blakers said.
"That helps the land holders because they can say we're in a class A zone and we're looking for large hosting fees compared with somebody who's in the class D zone.
"It helps the wind and solar farm companies because when they come into a district, they've got maybe 2000 land holders, they've got to sort through to find out who is willing to host, it would be quite refreshing I think to have a consortium of five or six landholders come to them."
While city dwelling Canberrans are unlikely to offer up a piece of land for a solar or wind farm, the uptake of small scale solar installation has increased significantly.
In data collated from the Clean Energy Regulator, almost 46,000 small scale solar installations had occurred from 2001 to November 2022 amounting to more than 293,000 kW in output.
In 2022 alone, 7400 solar panels had been installed, while 6461 were installed in 2021.
Breaking it down in postcodes, 2615 had the most solar installations with 6003 currently in the region.
Professor Blakers hopes more Canberrans can invest, whether it be small home solar panels or investing in wind or solar farms as the industry is expected to continue growing.
"By 2050 we're going to have to spend about $400 or $500 billion on the solar, the wind, the transmission storage, but on the other hand, we can spend zero on the fuel," he said.
Further information and access to the maps is available here for members of the public to analyse what parts of Australia could be suitable for a solar or wind farm.
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