The solar panels will cover almost the entire roof space at the hospital and Mid North Coast Cancer Institute in a $900,000 project.

Port Macquarie MP Leslie Williams said we all had a responsibility to make sure we did our part in looking after our environment and a part of the way we could do that was making sure we were more energy efficient.

“It makes perfect sense in an area like Port Macquarie, where we have one of the highest uptakes of rooftop solar, that we can do the same on our government facilities including our health facilities,” she said.

“Obviously hospitals have a huge expanse of rooftop available, and some 2030 panels will go up there, making a significant saving for the local health district that can be invested back into frontline services.”

Mid North Coast Local Health District project manager environmental sustainability Danny Saunders said the solar panel system would save about $130,000 a year in electricity costs on the current tariff.

Solgen is installing the panels in the 609 kilowatt project.

The installation will be completed by mid-July.

Mrs Williams also announced a separate $7 million energy efficiency project across the Mid North Coast Local Health District.

Mrs Williams said the great initiatives were going to benefit our health facilities and our communities.

An Energy Performance Contract, being undertaken by Veolia, is the other energy efficiency project.

The $7 million project involves a range of energy saving measures from more solar across the health district’s major sites, rainwater harvesting, heating and cooling projects and window tinting.

Some 9000 lights will be replaced with high efficiency LED lights.

“Overall the impact of both of these projects will be quite enormous,” Mr Saunders said about the hospital’s rooftop solar project and the Energy Performance Contract.

He said this was really the beginning of the local health district’s sustainability chapter.

“The hope is it flows onto more and more projects,” Mr Saunders said.