Like many councils today, Queensland’s Barcoo Shire Council set itself environmental goals in order to become a more sustainable council. Not only did they identify solar energy as a key component of its environmental strategy, the council believed they had a key role to play in informing the community about climate change.

Solar power is an effective and highly visible way to get the message across, while reducing Council's own carbon footprint in the process.

Through Power Purchase Agreements with Ingenero, Barcoo Shire Council has installed four world-class solar power systems on their facilities. Each has been designed, installed, maintained and is owned by Ingenero.

The council simply buys the energy generated from the system. Furthermore, by taking advantage of the Queensland Government’s net feed-in tariff, the council sells any excess power into the grid.

The new solar power installations feature 30kW at the Windorah Cultural Centre and 10kW at the Windorah Sports Centre. With the abundant supply of sunlight within the region, they will generate at least 178kW hours per day. At any point in time the council can understand the performance of their system by accessing, via the web, the performance data on Ingenero's EcoWatt Online Performance Monitoring.