TAMWORTH'S tip is set to become home to a new renewable power plant with the region's rubbish generating enough gas to power about 1000 homes.
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At this week's meeting, councillors voted in favour of awarding a 20-year contract to LMS Energy to turn landfill gas into electricity to pumped into the grid.
It's the culmination of almost three years' worth of work and trials conducted by Tamworth Regional Council's waste department which is determined in its mission to reduce its emissions footprint.
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The facility is expected to be up-and-running by early 2020.
The council's waste manager Dan Coe said the power plant represented a win on a few fronts for the community as a sustainable project which also created an income stream.
The council will be paid an undisclosed royalty based on the total revenue generated by the power plant.
LMS Energy will own, build and run the facility at the Forest Road landfill with no further input needed from the council.
This helped tip the project in the company's favour after it was put out to tender in April.
Mr Coe said larger landfills in places like Newcastle and Sydney had gone down this path, but there was nothing of this scale in the region.
"We will have power generation on the site, it'll go into a gas generator that'll export electricity into the grid," he said.
"We found [the landfill] could produce about 425 cubic metres of gas an hour.
The landfill gas tapped into with its 40 wells was about 50 per cent methane and the council wanted to guarantee it provided gas at that ratio before putting it out to market.
The contract-winning company still had to come back with its final design, but the initial plans were to run a one megawatt power plant off the gas.
LMS Energy has five renewable energy projects running in NSW in locations at Newcastle, Sydney, the Central Coast and Albury.
The company has 26 renewable energy projects across Australia, including three solar projects, generating more than 400,000 megawatt hours per annum.
Previous council-led explorations of the tip uncovered a methane supply big enough to power 800 households.