Cessnock City Council is successfully reducing their energy consumption.
Over the last four years, Council has been able to decrease their consumption at it’s nine largest sites by 15% as a part of their Energy Efficiency Program.
Council’s General Manager, Lotta Jackson said the program is making huge gains.
“We’ve made changes including removing old fluorescent lighting replacing it with LED lights, more recently we’ve had 252 solar panels installed on three buildings. Even in winter the solar panels are doing an amazing job! In fact, since they were switched on in March they have generated a combined total of 58.5 megawatt hours and amazingly we’ve not only powered ourselves, during some parts of the day, but exported 19% to the grid. Put simply, we’re generating more power then we need in the middle of the day and giving back. We can’t wait to see the results over summer!”
Council’s nine largest energy using sites consumed a total of 1,394 Megawatt hours during 2016-17. In 2020-21 the same nine sites consumed 1,187 Megawatt hours.
That’s a 15% decrease.
New LED streetlights installed on residential roads throughout the Cessnock Local Government Area are having an impact. Council’s Streetligthing Replacement Program, saw over 2,000 streetlights replaced with LED lights which has decreased electricity usage by 23%. This drop in consumption includes the continual growth in additional streetlights for new subdivisions.
“It’s exciting and encouraging to see these results and inspires Council to continue to look for opportunities to lower emissions and reduce our carbon footprint. I look forward to sharing our wins,” General Manager Lotta Jackson said.
Council said all of the savings made will cover the cost of the installation and be invested into future energy saving projects.
Image credit: Cessnock City Council