Work is nearing completion on a project to install 557 solar panels and a battery storage system at the Forensic Medicine & Coroners Court Complex at Lidcombe.

We’re excit­ed to be part of this fan­tas­tic sus­tain­abil­i­ty ini­tia­tive led by our Foren­sic & Ana­lyt­i­cal Sci­ence Ser­vice (FASS).

In 2022, NSW Health Pathol­o­gy com­mis­sioned a study on the poten­tial for solar pow­er at the new­ly opened Foren­sic Med­i­cine & Coro­ners Court Com­plex (FMCCC).

It found the build­ing had enough roof space to accom­mo­date a 348kw solar pan­el sys­tem, gen­er­at­ing an aver­age of 423,700 kilo­watt hours of pow­er each year.

Once the sys­tem is ful­ly func­tion­ing, we are expect­ing a 20% reduc­tion in our annu­al pow­er bills for the site and to save an aver­age of 88 tonnes of CO2 emis­sions each year.

Work on the project kicked off in Decem­ber 2023 and includes a solar pow­er back-up bat­tery specif­i­cal­ly for the Foren­sic Med­i­cine ser­vice to pro­vide pow­er to crit­i­cal equip­ment after busi­ness hours.

FASS Facil­i­ties Ser­vices Coor­di­na­tor, Renae Cur­rer says a mas­sive crane arrived on site in Jan­u­ary this year to begin the task of lift­ing the hun­dreds of pan­els and oth­er equip­ment onto the roof.

“Our build­ing occu­pants were real­ly excit­ed to see this work start­ing,” Renae said.

“We even had chil­dren from around the neigh­bour­hood watch­ing on as the crane swung into action.

“We’ve found this sort of project has a lot of buy-in from our peo­ple, who are keen to see the organ­i­sa­tion lead­ing the way when it comes to envi­ron­men­tal sustainability.”

The con­trac­tors worked through­out the end of a very hot sum­mer, lay­ing all the nec­es­sary cables, trays and all 557 solar pan­els on the var­i­ous roof spaces at the FMCCC.

Exter­nal works are now com­plete, and the sys­tem is now await­ing con­nec­tion to the grid and testing.

We’d espe­cial­ly like to thank our col­leagues at the Depart­ment of Com­mu­ni­ties and Jus­tice for their coop­er­a­tion and assis­tance in plan­ning the roof works, and for their under­stand­ing dur­ing some of the nois­i­est peri­ods of work!

The solar project is set to be com­plete by the end of June 2024, when all agen­cies with­in the facil­i­ty will ben­e­fit from solar pow­er onsite.

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