{"id":109,"date":"2015-12-22T16:09:36","date_gmt":"2015-12-22T21:09:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/?p=109"},"modified":"2015-12-22T16:10:45","modified_gmt":"2015-12-22T21:10:45","slug":"australia-looking-to-solar-for-electricity-needs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/australia-looking-to-solar-for-electricity-needs\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia looking to solar for electricity needs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Looking to replace its dependence on fossil fuels with cleaner renewable energy, Australia is counting on taking advantage of the Outback sun.<\/p>\n<p>A recent report from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2015-12-20\/tapping-the-outback-sun-to-send-electricity-to-australian-homes\" title=\"Bloomberg\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Bloomberg<\/strong><\/a> detailed Australia&#8217;s plans to move to solar energy and a major source in the coming years.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" width=\"550\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">How Australia&#39;s mining town of Broken Hill became a solar-power trailblazer <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/sZjTpW7oKL\">https:\/\/t.co\/sZjTpW7oKL<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/27ieM4KNnF\">pic.twitter.com\/27ieM4KNnF<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Bloomberg Business (@business) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/business\/status\/679081621027442689\">December 21, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Australia gets more solar radiation per square meter than any other continent, but sits far down on the list of regions that make wide use of solar farms. Now it&#8217;s looking to change that.<\/p>\n<h2>Broken Hill<\/h2>\n<p>Australian city Broken Hill, which sits about 700 miles west of Sydney, was once home to one of the world&#8217;s largest mining companies. Now, it is looking to become <a href=\"http:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/business\/energy\/how-an-australian-mining-town-became-a-solar-power-trailblazer-20151221-glsks3.html\" title=\"a solar power trailblazer\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>a solar power trailblazer<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>According to Bloomberg, a Broken Hill solar farm currently has about 678,000 solar modules installed at a 25-degree angle, facing north. Those panels are wired together to produce electrical power that can then be fed to the grid, which serves about 19 million residents.<\/p>\n<h2>Room to grow<\/h2>\n<p>Despite these recent advances in solar, Australia still has a lot of ground to cover when it comes to energy sources, Bloomberg noted. Solar power accounted for just 2 percent of power generated last year, while fossil fuels accounted for nearly 87 percent.<\/p>\n<span class=\"source-attribution\">Source &rarr; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2015-12-20\/tapping-the-outback-sun-to-send-electricity-to-australian-homes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Bloomberg<\/a><\/span><div class=\"pd-photo-att\">Photo Credit: <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Montague_Island_Solar_Power_System.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Photo<\/a> by Binarysequence \/ <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">CC BY-SA 3.0<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Looking to replace its dependence on fossil fuels with cleaner renewable energy, Australia is counting on taking advantage of the Outback sun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":111,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3,6,5],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":136,"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions\/136"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utilitieslocal.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}