A 60MW rooftop solar installation will supply clean renewable energy to tenants at the Moorebank Logistics Park (MLP) – Australia’s largest intermodal freight facility.
Leading Asia-Pacific logistics specialist LOGOS, together with its consortium partners, AustralianSuper, AXA IM Alts, Ivanhoé Cambridge and TCorp (the LOGOS Consortium), had completed their $1.67 billion acquisition of MLP in December 2021. MLP will be a fully automated port-to-site rail link and world-leading industrial and warehousing site, facilitating logistics and warehousing for some of Australia’s leading customers.
The LOGOS Consortium has now announced a 30-year partnership with Solar Bay to install and operate Australia’s largest rooftop solar installation at the premier intermodal and logistics precinct. Solar Bay is a Renewable Energy Fund that installs, owns, and operates energy infrastructure across Australia and New Zealand.
Solar Bay will provide network and retail energy services to tenants within MLP by installing 60MW of rooftop solar across the estate and 150MWh of battery energy storage to supply the embedded network with renewable electricity. The rooftop solar and microgrid installation at MLP will generate enough clean energy to power the equivalent of 40,000 homes in NSW, saving an estimated 67.2 kilotonnes of CO2 emissions each year.
LOGOS and Solar Bay will develop the precinct-wide microgrid, which will operate at a combination of 11kV and 33kV to provide the required electrical capacity to tenants. Once fully operational, the solar microgrid will be capable of meeting the full energy requirement of the precinct during daylight hours, while sourcing electricity from an off-site wind farm to supply renewable power outside peak solar generation periods.
With over 800,000sqm of roof space, the precinct has the capacity for up to 130MW of rooftop solar, capable of generating 183GWh of electricity per annum. Future plans include utilising the additional solar generation for electric truck fast charging, thermal storage, hydrogen generation and supply, and related low emission infrastructure.
The solar panels will also provide clean energy for the warehouse and container terminal operations, which will further reduce freight transport emissions into the future by promoting rail over road transport.
LOGOS, on behalf of the Consortium, said: “We are proud to make such a significant announcement in Australia’s renewable energy sector today, which will reap environmental benefits and innovation for a long time to come. We are committed to developing MLP with leading sustainability practices and outcomes at the fore, and our partnership with Solar Bay will allow the LOGOS Consortium to utilise the latest technologies so that we can produce, store, manage, and use energy more efficiently on-site at MLP and run all warehouse operations on 100% renewable energy.”
Head of LOGOS Australia and New Zealand, Darren Searle, said: “The implementation of this green infrastructure at MLP will accelerate our achievement of green scale and enable our operations to achieve net zero emissions. The impacts of the infrastructure that we will develop with Solar Bay at MLP will extend far beyond the site itself and play a key role in the state, regional and local economies given the size, scale and influence of our market-leading site. It also offers substantial opportunity to the tenants of MLP, where they seek to run their own business operations on a carbon-neutral mandate.”
Investment director at Solar Bay, James Doyle said: “MLP is a prime example of the convergence between property and energy infrastructure that we’re seeing across Australia and New Zealand. A precinct-wide microgrid facilitates the on-site installation of utility scale solar and batteries, providing tenants with the ability to access a vast amount of renewable electricity that matches the scale of their electrified operations.”
“Solar Bay is excited to be involved with the rollout of the renewable infrastructure at MLP, and sees it setting a strong precedent for what’s possible at industrial precincts moving forward,” he added.
