Solar Farm Flood Assessment

Flood impact assessment for a large photovoltaic development on flat coastal-plain country at the foot of the Darling Range — where the planning approval already carried a condition requiring stormwater and drainage to be resolved before construction.

Flat sites are not simple sites. With almost no fall, flood behaviour is governed by where water ponds and how long it sits there, so the assessment had to resolve sags along the internal road network and the performance of the crossings as carefully as it resolved the flood extents themselves.

A solar farm can tolerate shallow inundation across the array in a way most assets cannot. What it cannot tolerate is losing access to its own internal roads — so the design event that matters is the one that decides whether crews can reach a fault, not the one that wets the panels.