Today, I heard that the Australian Conservation Foundation has released its inaugural Sustainable Cities index, which ranks Australia's 20 largest centres to come up with our 'greenest' city. I would like to nominate a town in the Channel Country for what could possibly be the smallest and most sustainable town.
And that nomination would be for Windorah!
As you drive into Windorah from the East, you whizz past these magnficent dishes that make up a solar farm which was commissioned in 2009. Different combinations of dishes are used at different types to generate the electricity for the town of Windorah. Some are parked whilst others generate the power - a whole 360 000 kilowatt hours of electricity each year. Before this farm was installed, Windorah churned through 100 000 litres of diesel each year to keep the generators fueled, which in turn provided the electricity.
In the solar farm, there are five mirrored dishes, each 13.7 metres across which reflect the sunlight to a central point in the dish where there is a high capacity solar cell. The season, time of day and amount of cloud cover all determine the amount of electricity produced.
Why not check out these magnificent sentinels that stand guard to Windorah as you enter from Cooper's Creek? I take my cap off to these renewable energy sources which Ergon Energy has installed.
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