Semi-rural Buccan Ideal for Solar Power

About 20 miles south of Brisbane and about 5 miles from the center of Logan City lies Buccan, a semi-rural suburb. It is a locality of Logan city and is the focus of this study to determine the feasibility of solar power in Buccan.

Buccan is bordered by Logan Reserve, Waterford, Holmview, Bahrs Scrub among others. The Eastern border of this locality runs along the Logan River for its entirety. Buccan houses the Buccan Conservation Reserve, which hosts many native species and is maintained and managed by the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service.

It was primarily large scrubland which was cleared for farm settlements in the mid nineteenth century. Farms here at that time mostly used to produce sugarcane and dairy products. Now primarily horse country which is sold by acreage blocks Buccan has a peaceful rural life to offer with close connections to urban areas. It is a sparsely populated area with a population of about 1500 individuals.

Real estate as mentioned earlier, is primarily is acreage blocks. There is still a fair amount of unreleased land, but there hasn’t been any clear indication as to what will be done with it. Most of the farms are owned by small families who are middle aged or older.

Property prices here range around the 500,000 to 700,000 mark depending on the size of the acreage area and the type of house being offered. This area has a lot of open spaces and doesn’t have too many urban facilities like shopping centers or town center. People living here have to mostly go to neighboring areas for those.

Solar power in Buccan presents unique challenges and unique opportunities as well. There is undeveloped and yet unreleased rural land which can be used to set up arrays to feed power to the areas nearby and also some of it to Buccan itself. Due to the area being sparsely populated the power demand is fairly low.

For the acreage blocks solar power can be a presented as an incentive to further lower power bills. Some farms have horse rearing facilities and can use solar power for lighting and other related works. Another area could be public amenities like street lighting.

All this still has a very limited opportunity due to the sparse population and as of yet limited growth in the area. If there is land release later and this area follows suit like most of its northern neighbors turning into suburbia, only then will it have any impact on the individual house solar power market.

The best utilization for solar power in Buccan will be in the field of mass generation through large arrays. There is space in this locality and newer land can be released for this purpose. The neighboring areas have been put under a plan for rapid growth. To maintain and sustain the growth this growth power would be required and lots of it. This can partly come from the solar arrays if they are installed here.

Solar power, not just in Buccan but in southeastern Queensland is a necessity to develop to wean of the dependence on coal and gas powered stations which are overproducing power and contributing adversely to climate change.