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AMPC’s sustainability investment helps ramp up solar PV adoption

25 July 2022
AMPC’s sustainability investment helps ramp up solar PV adoption

AMPC’s free service to help members with initial assessment and design of new solar PV systems or check their existing systems performance has proven to be successful with new solar PV projects equalling 40 per cent of installed capacity across the industry. 

AMPC Program Manager Matthew Deegan said, “The project was called for by processors 15 months ago and it is now having a material impact on the deployment and planning for Solar PV across the Australian red meat processing industry.

“When the project started in July 2021, there was 13.1 MW of Solar PV installed at AMPC member sites throughout Australia. Since that date, the project provider, Beam, has conducted 50 assessments and assisted red meat processors to install, contract or approve a further 5.4 MW of solar PV. This adoption pipeline represents an increase by 40% in solar PV.”

The solar PV assessments also consider battery storage, finding that the business case for batteries depends on financial and back-up power benefits. Matthew said, “Back-up power benefits have increased significantly in recent months in line with increases in spot electricity prices. The benefits of back-up power can potentially be very large if power loss is frequent and/or incurs a large penalty. For red meat processors there can be significant lost production time and cost if the power is interrupted for even small periods as major electronic machinery and controls need to be reset and/or product is lost due to temperature sensitivity. 

“Each battery business case considered was unique and the project recommends assessing batteries along with solar PV to determine feasibility on a site-specific case.”

If you are interested in finding out more about solar PV, please contact AMPC Program Manager Matt Deegan at m.deegan@ampc.com.au