Horizon Power secures land to take Goldfields town to 100 pct renewables

Western Australia’s regional utility Horizon Power is seeking to shift the northern Goldfields town of Menzies to 100 per cent renewables, and looks to have secured the land to help make that happen.

The Menzies Shire Council last week voted to set aside enough land to support Horizon’s proposed renewable energy facility for the remote mining town, using a mix of solar PV battery storage.

State government-owned Horizon Power services one of the most expansive electricity grids with the least amount of customers in the world – a 2.3 million square km area that takes in the Pilbara, Kimberley, Gascoyne, Mid West and the southern region, inlcuding the Southern Goldfields, Esperance, Hopetoun and Norseman.

As part of this task, it operates 32 microgrids in some of the most isolated and remote communities in the world, most of them still powered by a combination of gas and diesel fuel.

But this is changing – both in line with state targets for a 100 per cent renewable grid by 2030 and because technologies like solar and storage are rapidly reaching cost parity with traditional generation sources.

Located 132km north of Kalgoorlie, the Shire of Menzies covers a total area of 125,000 square km and has a total population of around 400 people, with 150 of those living in town. Another 150 residents live at the Tjuntjuntjara Community in the Great Victorian Desert around 700km east of Menzies near the South Australian border.

Horizon recently bought the town’s existing gas and diesel fuelled power station, taking over the day-to-day operation while also taking the opportunity to assess the feasibility – and local support – for a shift to a renewable supply.

According to council meeting notes, Horizon carried out a land assessment to support a proposed 5.6 hectare energy generation facility as part of a broader project to transition several Gascoyne, Mid West and Goldfields towns to 100% renewable energy generation.

Council says the chosen site – which it has agreed to make available to Horizon – is considered most suitable for the renewable energy microgrid given its proximity to the existing power station and the fact that Native Title has been extinguished.

And there appears to be strong local support for the shift to renewables, too. A report in the Kalgoorlie Miner this week says Horizon held a community forum in February in Menzies.

“We’ve heard from residents, business owners and the Shire of Menzies that there is strong support for more renewable energy in the generation mix, and a strong desire to access rooftop solar,” a company spokesperson said.

Elsewhere on the Horizon grid, the utility recently managed to power the Pilbara town of Onslow entirely on a combination of large and small-scale solar and battery storage for a total of 80 minutes.

The achievement, in June of last year, was the utility’s second attempt at making Onslow – already powered by up to 90% renewables during the day – Australia’s largest town to run on solar and batteries alone.