Darwin’s Shoal Bay rubbish tip helps provide power to 1,200 houses

A renewable energy project at Darwin’s rubbish dump is helping produce 10,000 megawatt hours of electricity annually.

For the past 20 years, an energy project on the outskirts of Darwin has been quietly generating renewable electricity 24 hours a day.

It comes from a huge pile of the city’s waste.

As organic matter disposed of at the Shoal Bay Waste Management Facility breaks down, it produces landfill biogas.

Renewable energy company LMS Energy uses that biogas to fuel a modified Caterpillar engine, producing about 10,000 megawatt hours of electricity annually.