Australia’s first Indigenous-owned solar farm connected to a power grid has been officially opened in a Northern Territory remote community.
The 60-member Marlinja community, located 700 kilometres south of Darwin, has built a solar farm and battery after years of planning the microgrid project with Indigenous clean energy organisation Original Power.
Marlinja resident and Mudburra woman Janey Dixon said the community had been frustrated for years about suffering frequent wet season disconnections from their nearest diesel power station at Elliott, 25km away.
She said she was even more excited that, as well as having more reliable local electricity, the microgrid meant residents wouldn’t have to buy as many expensive power cards to run their household meters.
“We hope in the future we’ll be able to sell to the neighbouring cattle station and the local school,” Ms Mellor said.
“The issue has been around the stability of the grid, so that has been a sticking point, but we are getting very close to full implementation of those solar farms,” she said.
The original article contains 596 words, the summary contains 170 words. Saved 71%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Australia’s first Indigenous-owned solar farm connected to a power grid has been officially opened in a Northern Territory remote community.
The 60-member Marlinja community, located 700 kilometres south of Darwin, has built a solar farm and battery after years of planning the microgrid project with Indigenous clean energy organisation Original Power.
Marlinja resident and Mudburra woman Janey Dixon said the community had been frustrated for years about suffering frequent wet season disconnections from their nearest diesel power station at Elliott, 25km away.
She said she was even more excited that, as well as having more reliable local electricity, the microgrid meant residents wouldn’t have to buy as many expensive power cards to run their household meters.
“We hope in the future we’ll be able to sell to the neighbouring cattle station and the local school,” Ms Mellor said.
“The issue has been around the stability of the grid, so that has been a sticking point, but we are getting very close to full implementation of those solar farms,” she said.
The original article contains 596 words, the summary contains 170 words. Saved 71%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!