DKA Solar Centre

Desert Knowl­edge Aus­tralia (DKA) has a long asso­ci­a­tion with solar ener­gy and exper­tise through the DKA Solar Cen­tre. 

The Solar Cen­tre is the largest mul­ti tech­nol­o­gy solar demon­stra­tion facil­i­ty in the South­ern Hemi­sphere, with tech­nolo­gies that span many types, ages, makes, mod­els and configuration. 

The Solar Cen­tre is locat­ed at the Desert Knowl­edge Precinct in Alice Springs, a town with one of the coun­try’s high­est solar resources in an arid desert envi­ron­ment. Since its estab­lish­ment as a Com­mon­wealth-fund­ed project in 2008, the Solar Cen­tre has grown into a com­mer­cial­ly self-sus­tain­ing estab­lish­ment with over 40 instal­la­tions built in col­lab­o­ra­tion with indus­try, com­mer­cial and research partners. 

A true gem of Cen­tral Aus­tralia, the Solar Cen­tre is glob­al­ly recog­nised for its gen­er­a­tion of exten­sive live and long-term data, avail­able on its web­site. The data is used by researchers, devel­op­ers and aca­d­e­mics all over the world, and helps users under­stand how dif­fer­ent solar tech­nolo­gies per­form in a real-life set­ting. The data is invalu­able when con­sid­er­ing how the per­for­mance of solar tech­nolo­gies is affect­ed by age and envi­ron­men­tal factors. 

The Solar Cen­tre was an ini­tia­tive of DKA and Ekisti­ca. Ekisti­ca has been involved with the Solar Cen­tre since its incep­tion and is engaged by DKA to oper­ate and main­tain the facility.