Power Water Projects Clean Up at Engineering Awards Night

WILLEM VAN HOLTHE
MINISTER FOR ESSENTIAL SERVICES

Two Power and Water Corporation (PWC) Projects were recognised for their excellence at Friday night’s Engineering Awards held in Darwin.

The Archer Zone Substation won the People's Choice Award, while the TKLN Renewable Energy Project won the Research, Development and Innovation Award, along with the Australian Solar Energy Award for Sustainability.

Minister for Essential Services Willem Westra van Holthe congratulated PWC and said he was extremely pleased both the projects had been recognised, as the benefits they would provide for the Territory would be huge.

“The Archer Zone Substation, near Palmerston, will support the forecast growth in electrical load from the city's CBD and new suburbs to be built over the next five years,” Mr Westra van Holthe said.

The zone substation will step power down from 66,000 volt transmission from Channel Island and Weddell power stations to 11,000 volts for distribution into the suburbs of Mitchell, Johnson and Zuccoli and the central business district.

“It was estimated an extended outage of Palmerston zone substation could have cost the community in the order of $6 million a day,” he said.

“With this in mind PWC and GHD set about designing the future Archer Zone Substation. This was based on providing additional power supply capacity to meet the continual load growth, secure the power supply to the Palmerston community and enable the growth of the new suburbs to ease housing demands.

“The effort of this team will provide Palmerston, its future suburbs and the surrounding rural areas with a secure power supply for now and the future,” Mr Westra van Holthe said.

The TLKN project has seen almost one megawatt of renewable energy capacity installed in the remote Indigenous communities of Ti Tree, Kalkarindju and Alpurrurulam.

Minister for Regional Development Alison Anderson said the three flat-plate solar photovoltaic systems provided up to 80 per cent of the communitites’ power needs during the day.

“This is estimated to save more than 440,000 litres of diesel and 1200 tonnes of carbon emissions each year, which is absolutely remarkable,” she said.

The project is an advanced green energy project, due to the use of the large contribution that solar will make to the local electricity supply and the innovative solutions used to integrate solar with the diesel power stations at the communities.

“I congratulate again PWC for the work they have put in to these projects, to ensure the Territory has the best possible services,” Mr Westra van Holthe said.

Source: ProjectLink.com.au

View All »