A combined solar and methane power plant is set to commence operations in southern Australia. The facility, built on a landfill site, is believed to be the first of its kind in Australia.

The new project will generate approximately 2000 megawatt hours of renewable electricity each year, enough to power more than 345 homes in the local area.

Northern Adelaide Waste Management Authority (NAWMA), in partnership with Joule Energy, is developing the the new facility.

“As landfills have very little use once closed due to issues of land settlement and landfill gas, they are ideal locations for solar development,” NAWMA writes in a statement.

“Solar generation systems on landfills, and neighbouring buffer zones, provide an economically viable reuse for sites that may have significant clean-up costs and little potential for commercial or residential development. Considering this, NAWMA took the opportunity to partner with Joule Energy, an Australian owned, Adelaide based company who specialises in solar on landfills, to develop the solar generation facility to be situated on the Uleybury Landfill.”

The new solar farm, which will consist of 11,000 solar PV panels, is designed to integrate with the landfill gas renewable energy facility situated at the Uleybury landfill, supplementing its output. The collective electricity generated from both energy sources is expected to be over 11,000 megawatt hours per annum, enough to power more than 1,800 homes. By combining both landfill gas energy generation with solar, NAWMA claims the new facility will generate renewable energy 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

When compared to a traditional coal-fired power station generating the same amount of electricity, the NAWMA renewable energy facility will save approximately 24 million litres of water each year and prevent 63,500 tonnes of carbon (CO2-e) from being emitted into the atmosphere, it is claimed in the NAWMA statement.