Green power for broadcast site

Broadcast Australia has commissioned its first site to be majority-powered by renewable energy. The Mount Owen site near Queenstown in Tasmania has been upgraded to use site-generated wind and solar power, which are together expected to meet the site's 8 kW power needs for 80 to 90% of the time.

The Mount Owen site broadcasts a range of national and commercial analog/digital radio and television services to the Queenstown and Zeehan area, plus supports radio communications for local emergency services.

The power demands of new services, such as digital television, were starting to exceed the capacity of the existing mains feed.

As this is a remote facility, providing on-site renewable energy generation was a commercially viable option to enable the broadcast of digital television to the local area, compared with the cost of upgrading the mains feed.

At 980 m above sea level, Mount Owen has a strong prevailing south-westerly wind, making it suitable for wind turbine power generation.

A constant-output horizontal-axis wind turbine has been erected on a 15 m mast. The turbine is supplemented by 36 m² of mono-crystalline solar photovoltaic panels, rated at 5 kW peak generating capacity.

Excess generated electricity charges two banks of batteries - each rated at 2900 Ah - which supplement the supply when the combination of wind- and solar-generated power drops below the site demand of 8 kW. The batteries alone can provide power autonomy for two days.

During periods of limited on-site wind or solar generation, the balance of the site load can additionally be met from mains power or from an on-site 31 kVA diesel generator. This is set up to start automatically, but can be activated remotely from the network operations centre. Equipped with a 1000-litre fuel reserve, the generator can provide total site power for 10 days.