Awarded Project: CFS Energy Sustainability Rollout

CME is very proud to announce the successful appointment of the major Energy Sustainability program for the South Australian Country Fire Service (CFS) across 33 of the outer metro and region facilities.

This demonstrates the confidence in the expertise of the CME Sustainable Energy division in full Design and Construct Energy Sustainability projects and large programs.

"Sustainable Energy is at the forefront of the CME DNA. We're driven to play our part in bringing quality energy sustainability solutions to our clients, reducing their greenhouse emissions and delivering a positive impact on the environment, thus leaving our planet in a much better place" - Chris Mattner, CME CEO.

The key purpose for the CFS undertaking this project, is principally to reduce long term energy costs and therefore emissions. It will also assist the CFS by supporting progress towards its commitment to South Australia’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 percent by 2030 and achieving net zero emissions by 2050. Installation of battery storage will also have the benefit of being able to provide a certain level of back-up power to sites in the event of power/network outages.

The benefits of this project are therefore as follows:
1. It will provide for the savings in the cost of electricity charges at sites by using the battery’s capacity instead of buying the electricity from the grid.
2. It will enable the CFS to reduce energy emissions.
3. When sites are not in use and once the batteries are fully charged there will be the ability to export power to the grid at the feed in tariff thereby resulting in further savings.
4. For sites on a Small Business Demand (SBD) tariff, much of the network charges are based on the actual demand during the day. At these sites the demand will be reduced by the max power output of the batteries which will be 3kW per phase.
5. The battery storage will provide a level of back-up power to sites in the event of a power outage.

Our Solar PV and Battery package includes:
> Solar PV design and engineering
> Structural engineering certification
> Supply and installation of 18kW Solar and associated equipment at each of the 33 x CFS sites across South Australia
> Installation of 3x Sonnen 9.53kW batteries to be connected to the solar panels.
> Energy monitoring of each system

Our electrical infrastructure upgrade package of works includes:
> Upgrading the existing electrical infrastructure to current standards, allowing for solar/renewable package.
> Upgrading of energy metering

We look forward to sharing more of this exciting project journey in the coming months.