6. Ravenshoe

Solar panels on roof of Ravenshoe Community Centre

Project 6: Ravenshoe Community Centre, Qld

Ravenshoe is a rural and remote township situated on the western edge of the Atherton Tablelands in Queensland. Ravenshoe Community Centre provides a range of services to the communities of Ravenshoe, Millaa, and Mt Garnet including outlying rural areas. The site is shared by the Yabu Mija indigenous women’s organisation, and the grounds feature a community garden. Contact: comdevelop@ravcom.org.au

Project story…

The community centre installed 6kW of solar PV in September 2015, using $2,000 of their own funds and a $7,000 CORENA loan. At the time they had just received a grant to replace all their lighting with LEDs and that, in conjunction with their co-contribution to the solar cost, meant they could expect much greater savings on power bills than could be attributed solely to our loan. But they wanted to pay back their loan quickly, so they voluntarily elected to pay back the loan in just 2 years (instead of about 4 years) and made their final quarterly repayment in January 2018.

See what has been achieved via the CORENA loan to Ravenshoe Community Centre so far

* The MWh figure is the amount of grid electricity avoided by solar electricity generation and energy efficiency measures. The resultant reductions in carbon emissions can be visualised as an equivalent number of average households switching from grid electricity to 100% renewable electricity, noting that the subsequent projects have been avoiding grid electricity for less time than the original project.

This project has been fully funded- Thank you!

Progress bar showing fully funded via $5026.31 in new donations and $1,973.69 in loan repayments

Honour roll

Thanks to all the people who have donated to this project.

Donated directly to this project:

Big Win donations that were temporarily used for this project then later repaid to the Big Win funding stream where they helped fund the Enova Community Generator project:

Status: Funded project – loan fully repaid
Loan amount: $7,000
Loan repayments: $855/quarter

Loan repayments table - loan fully repaid

Work details

Solar 6kW grid connect system
• 24 x 250W ET Solar ET-P660250WW Polycrystalline Panel
• 1 x SMA SB5000TL-21 Inverter
Cost: $9,000 ($2,000 paid up front by Ravenshoe Community Centre and a $7,000 loan from CORENA)
Expected savings: 26kWh per day, $2,460/yr

Reduction in carbon emissions/yr: Equivalent to 1.71 average households using renewable electricity instead of grid electricity