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Milton Ulladulla ExServos CLub CEO Darryl BozicevicMilton Ulladulla ExServos CLub
CEO Darryl Bozicevic
The Milton Ulladulla ExServos Club expects to save about $70,000 a year in energy costs from the 215 kilowatt peak (kWp) Enphase microinverter-equipped solar panels it has installed on its premises.

Located at Ulladulla on the NSW south coast, three hours from Sydney, the Milton Ulladulla ExServos Club has recently undergone a major expansion of the $10 million premises it opened in 2009. The club expects its new solar photovoltaic (PV) system will reduce its total power consumption by half - and as much as 80 per cent by shaving peak loads - cutting its annual energy costs by about $70,000 a year. This will provide a payback of about three years on the net cost of the system.

With 85 employees and 13,500 members, the club has deep roots in the community, supporting many local sports and community organisations. 

The solar system was installed by Bawley Point NSW-based Enphase partner SunnyAfternoons Pty Ltd, an Enphase Platinum Partner which supports customers from the NSW South Coast to Gippsland in northeast Victoria. SunnyAfternoons installed the 100 kilowatt/peak (kWp) first stage of the system in December 2020 and the remaining 115 kWp in the middle of this year. The complete system contains 581 370-watt mono perc solar panels, each equipped with Enphase IQ7+ microinverters. 

Milton Ulladulla ExServos Club CEO Darryl Bozicevic said the club invested in the solar PV system to reduce energy consumption and to demonstrate corporate social responsibility. “We’d looked at it for a number of years and, from a pricing point of view, decided it was time to move,” he said.

Wollongong City Council solar carpark

Wollongong City Council has installed solar panels equipped with Enphase microinverters on a carpark to reduce its administration building energy costs by as much as one quarter annually.

Each of the 549 solar panels on the council’s multi-storey Stewart Street carpark is equipped with an Enphase microinverter to optimise performance, simplify maintenance and for greater safety. This latest solar system adds to an existing 327 kilowatts-peak (kWp) of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels already installed on various council assets.

The new 219.6 kWp system has solar panels fixed to steel frames to shade vehicles in the carpark. Annually, the solar carpark will generate as much as 316 megawatts hours (MWh) of energy, enabling it to offset about three months per year of energy use by the council’s adjacent 6 Star Green Star-rated Administration Building, as well as exporting excess energy to the grid. Since it was commissioned in late August, the Enphase monitoring portal reports that the system generated 82.95 MWh to November 17, with a peak daily generation of more than 1.7 MWh. 

Amanda Warren with Vic Ratnieks (centre) and husband Mark at the Gumeracha HotelAmanda Warren with Vic Ratnieks (centre) and husband Mark at the Gumeracha HotelThe Gumeracha Hotel has won an Australian Hotels Association of SA Award for innovation for its nimble customer-focussed response to the pandemic, assisted by a Facebook Messenger ordering app designed by hungry software developer Vic Ratnieks.

The renovated hotel collected the Excellence award in the ‘Recognition of Adaption & Innovation’ category – along with Crown Inn Kingston and The Playford in Adelaide – which means they will represent SA in the AHA National Awards, to be held in Hobart on February 7 next year.

Gumeracha Hotel owners Mark and Amanda Warren scored the award for their innovative response during the depths of last year’s COVID-19 downturn when trade was decimated by lockdowns and social distancing limits when no one was allowed to go to a pub or dine in. 

Ultra Commerce CEO Matthew HylandAfter raising more than $10 million for growth this year, Sydney-based Ultra Commerce has acquired US-based Slatwall Commerce to accelerate the global reach of its end-to-end digital commerce platform.

In its second strategic acquisition of 2021, Ultra Commerce is integrating technology and teams from both companies to strengthen its digital commerce platform, which is designed to deliver richer integrated eCommerce capabilities for customers ranging from fast-growing small businesses to global enterprises.

Slatwall Commerce is a Massachusetts-based company with deep technical capability in “headless commerce”, which decouples the back end of an eCommerce website from its customer-facing “head”.In June, Ultra Commerce acquired a New Zealand-headquartered company with clients in North America, Vesta eCommerce, which brought market-leading product data management capabilities to further enhance the Ultra Commerce platform by enabling it to easily integrate disparate sources of product data.

With these acquisitions, Ultra Commerce now has eight offices in five countries, with more than 100 staff serving over 60 customers globally, positioning the business to scale quickly.