There are plans to build the country’s largest solar farm at Nyngan.
Infigen Suntech Australia has submitted a development application with the New South Wales Department of Planning to construct the $300 million farm south of the town.
If approved, it will take around nine months to build and will create around 55 local jobs.
The company’s General Manager of Development, David Griffin, said Nyngan was not just chosen for its sunny weather.
“We do have to balance the fact that there’s a lot of very predictable and strong sunny days, with finding a site that doesn’t get too hot, because if it gets too hot then you start to degrade the performance of the photovoltaic panels,” he said.
“And, it has very good access to a piece of the electricity network that needs additional generation.”
Infigen Suntech Australia wants to construct the farm on 160 acres of land by the end of 2012.
Mr Griffin said it is hoped that some of the jobs will go to local people.
“There’s obviously a number of highly specialised skills during the construction but there’s also a large amount of low to medium skilled jobs so we’ll be looking to employ a lot of local labourers. And, during operational phase we’ll be looking to train staff up and we’ll certainly be looking in the local area for people with those types of skills.”
