School Manager's Update

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue38 1–31 March 2023

Hello everyone, welcome to autumn (meteorological), as there are no colourful leaves just yet.   

Last week Sindu and I were fortunate enough to visit Siding Spring. Aside from catching up with the SSO team, we took a closer look at the Visitor Centre, talking to Branioc and Brodie (operators) about the upcoming Elevate SSO project. We have a lot to accomplish in the next few years, but first together with the Advisory Body, we will work to plan and finalise the scope of the projects. We look forward to seeing the upgrades at the SSO exploratory, particularly the informative displays, which we hope will take on more of a futuristic and interactive form. With any luck, some of these display upgrades will spill over to the Stromlo Visitor Center, which remains in discussions with a potential partner/operator.

Thank you to the SSO staff, for the warm welcome on site, sharing your stories and taking us for a look behind the scenes.

Last week in the All-School meeting, I bored everyone with a 27 minute presentation, which included the School budget. While I will not repost those figures here, I just wanted to reaffirm, while we are in tight position, there are options on the table and opportunities for exciting projects and initiatives. A call out for strategic initiatives will come soon, so let’s keep up the innovation.

The final phase of the AITC solar project has just been installed. Thank you to all those involved, and to David Brodrick for supplying the UAV shot. I was hoping to provide a detailed update on the electricity production statistics, but the tracking software (not production) has recently been malfunctioning.

In any case, we produced 48 MWH between August and mid December. This is about 330kw/h per day on average, with a peak of 660kw/h on sunny days in December. With the final panels going in now, we will see these figures increase.  The next phase is likely to be part of the Woolley renovations, later this year, with plenty of empty roof space remaining. While we are achieving great production results, back of envelope calculations suggest that our current installation will only cover 10-15% of our total site consumption. This is a good opportunity to remind everyone to please turn off lights and air conditioners at the end of each day or when you are not in your office for extended periods of time.  

Wishing everyone a good month.

Mat Malzacher