Less than three weeks after commencing work on a 2MW expansion of a solar farm at the Carosue Dam mine site in Western Australia’s (WA) goldfields region, Perth-based Nomadic Energy has announced the new off-grid installation is now commissioned and energised.

“The project was completed in under three weeks on site and brings the solar farm to 5.3MW in capacity and the site to 6.3MW in total solar capacity,” the company said in a social media post.

The new solar array, which is the latest expansion of the original 1MW solar installation that was commissioned in January 2020, features prefabricated, pre-wired Maverick solar modules designed by Sydney-based manufacturer 5B.

Nomadic said during construction that the rollout of the prefabricated modules had exceeded expectations.

“Pretty spectacular day up here. Almost 2MW down in nine days on site. The trucks can’t keep up,” the company said during the install.

Nomadic said the project is the first in Australia to use the latest generation of 5B’s re-deployable modular Maverick solar technology which the manufacturer said is not only quicker and easier to install than the previous model but 30% more powerful.

5B said its Maverick solution can be deployed up to 10 times faster and can generate up to twice the energy as conventional single axis tracker installations of comparable size using the same amount of land.

The latest install at the Carosue Dam mine site increases the total on-site solar capacity to 6.3MW as part of a six-year power purchase agreement (PPA) between Nomadic and Northern Star. It is anticipated the installed solar capacity will offset 6,686 tonnes of carbon emission per year.