Smart Energy Solution
Ti Tree Food Barn, north of Alice Springs, used a government grant for a solar system, cutting energy costs significantly.
A remote store, cafe, service station and campground has used a Territory Government grant to reduce its energy costs.
Ti Tree Food Barn, 195 kilometres north of Alice Springs, was helped under the popular Smarter Business Solutions program to install a 32.76kW solar PV system and 45kWh lithium battery bank.
The system, which was installed by local contractor Hills Electrical and Solar, cost nearly $134,000.
Annual electricity consumption is about 80,661kWh at a cost of $2000 per month.
The new solar PV system is expected to generate about 96 percent of the average annual daytime electricity use or about 76 percent of the total annual consumption.
This means the solar system will pay for itself in about 4.2 years.
Ti Tree Food Barn manager Hannes Rosslee said: 'The solar grant has helped us to keep our power on during power outages, saving us a lot of time and money.
'We can now keep the store open and operating during these times for the community’s convenience, as well as not having to lose and dispose of food that would have been wasted in an outage.'
He said the solar set-up enabled the business to save 60 percent a year in power costs.
'The grant was easy to apply for.'
Territory businesses, Aboriginal enterprises and not-for-profit organisations can get help to reduce day-to-day energy, water, waste and material costs through the Smarter Business Solutions program.
The program offers different types of support including:
- advice on efficient technologies and practices
- a walk-through site survey to identify potential savings opportunities
- grants to encourage and support cost savings or initiatives – up to 50 percent of the cost for efficiency improvements to a maximum of $20,000; up to 20 percent for the installation of off-grid renewable energy systems to a maximum of $20,000; and up to 10 percent for the installation of on-grid renewable energy systems to a maximum of $10,000.
For more information, visit the Northern Territory Government website.
