Beryl gets the go-ahead to help power Sydney Metro Northwest
06.07.2018
A solar farm in regional New South Wales will help deliver a new generation of metro rail services in Sydney’s north west.
The farm, known as the Beryl Solar Farm, includes about 260,000 solar modules on a 145 hectare site outside Gulgong and is expected to be supplying electricity to the power grid from mid-2019.
Part of the electricity produced by Beryl will be used to offset the entire operational electricity needs – approximately 134,000 Megawatt hours a year – of the new Sydney Metro Northwest railway.
In 2013, the NSW Government committed that greenhouse gas emissions from operational electricity use on Sydney Metro Northwest will be fully offset.
The Beryl Solar Farm will create about 150 jobs during construction as well as ongoing employment when operational.
Separately, in 2017, a 1.1 Megawatt solar array as big as a football field was installed at Sydney Metro HQ in Rouse Hill.
The 3,287-panel array is the biggest on any NSW Government building and covers more than 6,500 square metres – two-thirds of the maintenance building roof at the Sydney Metro Trains Facility.
It will generate approximately 1.5 million kilowatt hours of electricity per year – that’s enough to power about 270 average homes for a year.
The electricity generated by the panels will be used to power some of the Sydney Metro railway stations as well as the maintenance facility, where Sydney’s new metro trains will be serviced.
The trains themselves use high voltage power not related to the Rouse Hill solar array.