Australia's Pacific Hydro Limited has announced that its new run of river hydro development located at 'The Drop' near Berrigan in south central New South Wales has commenced generation.
The 2MW project is located on the Mulwala canal, Australia’s largest irrigation channel and exploits the previously unutilised energy potential in the water flow which is released for irrigation purposes.
Pacific Hydro expects the project to generate approximately 11,000MW/hr per annum generating the equivalent amount of Renewable Energy Certificates (REC’s) under the Federal Governments Mandatory Renewable Energy Target scheme.
Pacific Hydro has a 10-year agreement to sell all REC’s and energy generated by the plant to major New South Wales energy retailer Country Energy.
‘This is Australia’s first hydroelectric scheme utilising an irrigation channel and is another demonstration of how we can harness our natural resources and use them in a totally sustainable way,’ said Pacific Hydro managing director Jeff Harding.
• Pacific Hydro owns and operates four other hydro projects in Australia with a total generating capacity of 40MW, the largest of which is the 30MW Ord hydro power station in the Kimberly region of Western Australia. The company also has a 50% share of the 70MW Bakun run-of-river hydro project in the Philippines and is pursuing other international projects.