Australia's largest commercial rooftop solar system to be built

Australia's largest privately-owned rooftop photovoltaic solar system will be constructed and installed at NEXTDC's data centre in Port Melbourne.

NEXTDC, an independent data centre operator, will spend a total of $1.2 million for the installation of up to 400kW of solar panels to generate around 550 MWh of electricity per year.

Australia-based Energy Matters will construct the system, which is expected to offset over 670 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per annum, over the next couple of months.

"As one of first truly large-scale, privately funded and owned rooftop PV solar systems, we see this as the start of something big for commercial solar in Australia and applaud NEXTDC for taking the lead," said Energy Matters managing director Jeremy Rich.

NEXTDC CEO Bevan Slattery said his company is also planning to deploy up to 1MW of solar energy within the next year at its upcoming facilities.

"We are very aware of the future pressures on energy consumption and we are committed to reducing our carbon footprint however we can," Slattery said.

said his company feels excited to be part of the NEXTDC project.