About Us

Blacktown City is one of only seven solar cities within Australia. With funding under the Australian Government’s $94 million Solar Cities initiative, the Blacktown Solar City consortium is working with industry, businesses and the local community to rethink the way they produce and use energy.

Practical Benefits for the Local Community

176 Blacktown households have installed a BP Solar Energizer electricity system with 47 households also installing a solar hot water system.
210 kilowatts of solar electricity has been installed on commercial buildings in Blacktown
Over 3,000 energy efficiency consultations for households have been undertaken benefiting recipients with a comprehensive energy assessment and installation of energy efficient light bulbs.
12,700 energy efficiency packs (almost 76,500 compact fluorescent bulbs) have been distributed to the Blacktown community.
Benefits for more than 1800 customers who participated in the Energy Saver Trials. Shifting their energy usage from peak demand periods to periods of lower demand.
131 households participated in the discounted ceiling insulation offer and are now involved in a trial to measure energy savings from properly installed insulation.
A trial has given energy providers direct access to air conditioner and pool pump switches to control their during periods of peak electricity demand.
Smart meters are giving residential customers timely information on energy use.
Over 184,000 Energy efficient discount voucher booklets have been distributed to all Blacktown residents, with further discount offers to come.
Accessibility has been provided for residents from non-English speaking backgrounds.
Educational Information on energy efficiency and climate change has been distributed to over 92,000 Blacktown households.

The Results

Savings of over 5.36 gigawatt-hours of electricity annually.
Blacktown City’s greenhouse gas emissions reduced by more than 6.6 tonnes each year.
Annual savings of $1 million in electricity bills for the Blacktown City community.

Consortium Profiles

Big Switch Projects:

Big Switch Projects are energy, water and carbon solutions experts. We deliver improved environmental performance in existing buildings. Big Switch Projects believes that one of the easiest and most profitable ways of improving your business’s productivity is to prevent or stop wasting energy. Energy and water efficiency reviews can help you cut operating costs and increase your profits. Big Switch Projects wants to make it easier for businesses to tackle increasing energy costs and to reduce their carbon footprint.

Big Switch Projects joined Blacktown Solar City consortium to deliver both the Business Energy Efficiency Program and the Ceiling Insulation Comfort and Energy Trial with the aim of making a positive impact on energy consumption in both homes and Businesses in the Blacktown local government area. We are proud to be members of this innovative program.

Blacktown City Council:

Located in the heart of Western Sydney, Blacktown is a dynamic and vibrant city that plays a key strategic role in the greater Sydney region. Blacktown is the most populous local government area in NSW with approximately 300,000 residents living in 47 suburbs. One in 73 Australians call Blacktown home.

Blacktown is a practical 'can do' city. Council's primary commitment is to achieve our diverse goals through the delivery of tangible projects and programs that will leave a lasting community legacy.

The Blacktown Solar City project, when combined with all of Council s community environmental initiatives, presents an opportunity for Blacktown City to be recognised as a city that has adopted a proactive approach toward climate change and one that respects our local environment. It also ensures that Council and our community are moving towards sustainability while receiving national recognition for our participation in the Solar Cities program.

It is anticipated that the Blacktown Solar City project will be a vehicle for educating the community on alternative energy technologies and aspects of living sustainably, as well as providing an opportunity to integrate these technologies into the community s day-to-day living.

BP Solar:

A key part of BP’s Alternative Energy division, BP Solar is a global business focused on harnessing the sun's energy to produce solar electricity. BP Solar design, manufacture and market solar electricity solutions for the residential, commercial and utility sector.

In conjunction with the Australian Government and as a consortium leader, BP Solar propel the Blacktown Solar City consortium’s commitment to providing energy saving solutions through various offers within the Blacktown Solar City project.

With almost 40 years experience in the solar industry, BP Solar is known for superior products and services. Its expertise in the solar industry is unrivalled and BP Solar has established a leading position while honouring innovation, integrity and safe practices.

BP Solar’s various involvements in numerous Solar Cities Projects depicts its commitment to combat climate change and introduce several ways that help local communities shift their behaviour towards saving energy and reducing carbon emissions.

BP Solar is proud to lead the Blacktown Solar City Consortium toward a greener and sustainable future.

Endeavour Energy – (Formerly known as Integral Energy)

With its recent transition, we are proud to introduce Endevour Energy into the Blacktown Solar City consortium. Endeavour’s Energy network serves over 2.1 million people spanning 24,500 square kilometres across Sydney’s Greater West, the Illawarra, Blue Mountains and Southern Highlands.

With an estimated value of $3.3 billion, this network is made up of over 170 major substations, 315,000 power poles and 28,000 smaller substations bound together by 33,000 kilometres of underground cables and overhead powerlines. Endeavour Energy employs 2,888 people who are located at a corporate head office in Huntingwood Sydney’s West and throughout 17 Field Support Centres.

The ongoing responsibilities of Endeavour Energy will be to:

Deliver a $4.2 billion upgrade of the electricity network by mid 2014
Maintain the poles and wires bringing electricity to your home or business.
Restore power supply after storms
Read electricity meters, repair street lights and keep trees a safe distance from power lines.

Under its previous name as Integral Energy, Endeavour Energy maintained an active involvement in the Blacktown Solar City project. It is through this project that provided the opportunity to implement and execute various trials such as peak pricing trials, energy saving trials and standby power reporting trials. The results from these trials are aimed to contribute to being the basis of future energy-saving government policies.

Landcom

Sustainability is fundamental to our business. We invest in sustainable development – not because we are required to but we believe it’s the right thing to do.

At Landcom we aim to balance outcomes for the environment, the economy and the community. We aim to create places that are liveable, viable and equitable. We were the first development organisation in the world to report the sustainability performance of our projects. We’ve consistently led the development industry in promoting higher standards in sustainable design and we’ve been instrumental in raising environmental consciousness in the property development industry.

Landcom believes in sharing our expertise and insights with other agencies and councils. We are frequently called on to ‘road test’ proposals from our state and local government colleagues prior to implementation. We often do this by providing feedback on policy initiatives and legislative amendments, and the cost impacts of these to the industry.

Our involvement in Blacktown Solar City is nothing short of challenging in overcoming the barriers in introducing ways to build sustainable living homes within The Ponds development area. With affordable packaged offers, we were able to implement solar home packages to new homes built in The Ponds area early in the project. As the project moves into it’s data collection stage, Landcom has played a rewarding and enjoyable role in delivering it’s objectives for the project.

The Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency.

The Australian Government’s $94 million Solar Cities program is a partnership between governments, industry, businesses and local communities to roll out a range of innovative and sustainable energy solutions in local communities across Australia.

The seven locations selected for the Solar Cities program are Adelaide, Alice Springs, Blacktown, Central Victoria, Moreland, Perth and Townsville. The individual projects are trialling a mix of technologies including solar hot water and solar panels, energy efficient products and services, load management, smart meters and cost-reflective pricing in large scale grid connected urban sites.

Building infrastructure to meet increasing demand for energy adds to future electricity prices. By using solar technologies and employing simple measures that save energy, Solar Cities will model alternatives to building more fossil fuel power plants and costly electricity infrastructure. This will help to deliver electricity cheaply and efficiently, when and where it is needed, now and into the future.

Data collected from each of the trials will show how different projects can reduce our energy use and will inform future policies. Further information on the Solar Cities program and the activities underway in individual cities can be found on the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency website at www.climatechange.gov.au/solarcities