Solar Powers A Town

White Cliffs is an opal mining town, situated in a desert area of far north-western New South Wales, in Australia. Opals where first discovered in the area in 1884 and the town was founded in about 1889. With the discovery of some valuable stones, the town began to rapidly grow and by about 1900 there were over 1,000 resident miners. Miners continued to flock to the area, increasing the population to about four thousand, until about 1914 when the first world war broke out and Australian citizens were called for military service.

Over the years the population of White Cliffs has fluctuated between a handful and a few hundred, with the pub and general store being kept in business by the patronage of local station hands. These days, the value of opal production is in excess of $1,000,000 per year, as miners use bulldozers and modern mining methods in their search for the precious gemstones.

White Cliffs, is an extraordinary place that is hard to comprehend at first glance. Over 50,000 holes have been dug in, and around White Cliffs giving it the appearance of a lunar landscape. The surrounding area is a barren plain infested with clumps of spinifex grass that includes a series of large parabolic dishes, facing towards the heavens, tracking the sun's daily journey across the sky. This indeed, could be a movie set for a sci-fi motion picture.

It is quite apparent that there has been absolutely no town planning, as the town spreads aimlessly from the hotel and general store, heading in all directions along dusty, unsealed roads. Civic pride has obviously been forsaken by the local population, in order to fully concentrate on extracting the precious stones from their underground refuge.

Nevertheless, when a traveller comes upon White Cliffs it is akin to reaching a desert oasis. The nearest town is about 90 kilometers away, the nearest city is Broken Hill, almost 300 kilometers away and it's about 900 kilometers to Adelaide, the nearest capital city. During the day, the tourist will find the town apparently deserted, although he will be made welcome at the pub and the servo. On doing a brief inspection of the town a tourist will discover only about 20 dwellings, most of which, will be vacant.

The daytime temperature at White cliffs rises to fifty degrees Celsius during the summer and the evening temperature can fall to below zero degrees C. in the winter. Underground temperature is a constant twenty two degrees C., so most residents choose to live underground in dugouts. These dwellings can be made quite luxurious with ducted ventilation systems, solar lighting and absolute privacy. The local motel that boasts thirty guest rooms, a restaurant, bistro and conference rooms is entirely underground, apart from the swimming pool, which has been built at ground level.

White Cliffs is the first township in Australia to use solar energy to supply a community's electricity requirements. Originally, a team from the Australian National University constructed a solar power station in 1981 as an experiment. Two rows of seven parabolic heliostat dishes were erected to collect the sun's rays, and focus them on an apparatus to generate steam that drove a Stirling piston engine. This system generated 25KW of electricity that was stored in batteries and used to power part of the town. A backup diesel generator was used to supply the rest of the town and cover any downtime that the solar system might have had.

The experiment proved to be successful and in 1996 the system was upgraded, and now has fourteen parabolic dishes containing clusters of photovoltaic cells that produce seventy KW of electricity. White Cliffs solar power station now meets all of the town's electricity needs and feeds into a grid system, which has replaced the bank of batteries and diesel generator.

As renewable energy systems are being advocated there will be many more communities that will switch to solar energy, in order to use a more sustainable energy source, and help to protect the planet.

Oze Parrot is an author, publisher and Internet marketing consultant. Formerly a tourist operator and real estate business marketing consultant Location: Queensland, Australia.
His website is at http://homehunter.erlypro.com/solar/

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Solar Energy Powers White Cliffs NSW