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Logo of Kangaroo Ridge Retreat

A Very Large Solar Array

Hassle-free hours passing by with the beat – The Cat Empire

Did you know we have one extra day of summer this year? It’s been four years in the making! LOL!

And now we have more summertime to do the things we love at Kangaroo Ridge Retreat. Some of the best parts of summer in the Valley are the long evenings while sitting on the balcony as the Valley cools. The fresh air from the mountains and open spaces is unforgettable.

What’s better than watching the stars come out with a wine in hand, a BBQ sizzling away and some cool summer tunes? An extra day of summer!

But yeah – we know. Summer can get hot! And we’ve been working on it.

This year we would like to think we’re a bit more prepared. We’d like to share that we recently installed a very large array of 32  panels of solar. That’s just in time for those days when you have no choice but to use air conditioners.

We’re actively making to improve Kangaroo Ridge Retreat’s environmental and carbon footprint. This Very Large Array of 32 Solar Panels took a bit of time to organise as it’s bigger than your average residential system and navigating solar installers took a while. After a navigating the residential and commercial solar sector, an Environmental Upgrade Agreement with the council for more than 12 months we went out on our own bat with Cherry Energy.

Being located in a front line area of bush fires – ones that are being exacerbated by climate change – we don’t argue about the science. We are pragmatic and just get onto making things better.

Our heavy investment into clean energy is just one environmental infrastructure upgrade

Watch this space because fighting climate change is not a set and forget process. We are continuously working towards reducing our impact for future generations. Our sights currently include our supply chain footprint, waste reduction and moving away from natural gas.

It also has major business flow-on benefits too. In a period of fluctuating energy bills, solar is going to help. Also, we are feeding back into the grid because we chose not to go with batteries and a generator at this time.

While batteries do make sense in an area prone to brown-outs and the odd black-out, feeding back into the electricity grid is a recognition of being part of a community and our surplus power not being completely wasted. Our overall aim is to be grid independent.

Feel free to ask us questions about our solar install in the comments below and I will come back and answer them.

Until we welcome you on the Ridge, safe and happy travels.

x Rebecca

P.S. Over to the right is a picture of yours truly at the actual Very Large Array in New Mexico, USA in 2004.

 

 

Very Large Array 2004

Healesville
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Healesville VIC, Australia