In June 2012 Ergon Energy commissioned the 348 kW Annandale Solar Power Station which is located on the roof of the Townsville RSL Stadium in Annandale, Townsville. This is the only Ergon Energy Solar City installation on the mainland, complementing the 210 systems on Magnetic Island.

The Honourable Mark Dreyfus, QC MP, the Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency opened the power station in August 2012.

The installation consists of 348kW of photovoltaic solar panels, 28 inverters and various switchboards housing isolating, metering and protection equipment. The system is directly connected to the grid and can supply up to half the load of the Stadium. In times when the load from the Stadium is low, the excess generation is fed into the 11kV local system via the Stadium’s dedicated distribution transformer.

The main type of inverter used is the Sunny Tripower, which produces a balanced 3 phase output and has reactive power capabilities. There are also Power One Aurora 4.2 kW inverters (SOLAR 3) installed and a single Sunny Mini Central (SOLAR 1) single phase inverter. A total of 1811 Kyocera Solar Modules have been installed, 825 x KD135GH-2P and 986 x KD240GX-LFB.

As noted in the previous section, the period September to December is most productive for PV systems for the Townsville region.