Summer Hill Renewable Energy Facility

Grid-connected, base load renewable energy
Location: Newcastle, NSW
Commissioned: 2009

Summer Hill renewable energy facility

The Summer Hill renewable energy facility operated by LMS Generation sits across the Summerhill Waste Management Centre. The landfill is operated by Newcastle City Council, with LMS Generation being responsible for implementing the technology and infrastructure necessary to produce renewable electricity from the waste in the landfill.

The Technology

Landfill gas is formed from the decomposition of the organic component of waste deposited in landfills. The process of microbial degradation under anaerobic conditions releases the energy stored in organic matter as methane.

LMS Generation employs a series of wells across the landfill to capture the landfill gas. The methane is extracted from the landfill gas (typically landfill gas is 55% methane and 45% carbon dioxide). The methane is then combusted in generators to produce renewable electricity.

Energy Capacity

The Summerhill facility has two 1.1MW generators onsite

Environmental impact

Not only does the conversion of landfill gas to electricity destroy a potentially harmful global warming gas, methane. In the process of combusting the methane in the generators, the electricity that is produced displaces harmful fossil fuel emissions that otherwise would have been emitted in order to produce the electricity.

It has been proven that when generators capture over 82% of the methane being emitted from the landfills, which LMS Generation achieves, the landfill turns into a carbon sink, when the fossil fuels it displaces are taken into account.