About 2900 solar panels will be installed at the CSIRO's Black Mountain facility as part of a larger plan the federal government agency says will eventually help it save more than $900,000 on energy bills each year.
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The CSIRO called for tenders this month and plans to negotiate and sign a contract with its preferred contractor by November 22 before deciding on a timeline for the work.
The installation, which will include about 1000 kilowatts of solar cells installed across the site, follows the introduction of 480 panels at Black Mountain earlier this year.
More than 880 kilowatts of solar photovoltaic system capacity has already been rolled out across CSIRO sites at Black Mountain, Armidale in NSW, Werribee in Victoria, Kensington in Western Australia and Darwin since 2016.
A CSIRO spokesman said in addition to the second installation at Black Mountain, the CSIRO would install about 1.2 megawatts of solar photovoltaic system capacity across its sites at Pullenvale in Queensland and Waite in South Australia.
A further 4.2 megawatts of capacity was proposed for additional sites in the ACT, NSW, Victoria and Western Australia.
"Once installed, these [photovoltaic] systems will deliver more than $900,000 [in] annual savings on energy bills, save close to 8000 megawatt hours of energy and reduce CO2 equivalent emissions by about 7400 tonnes each year," the spokesman said.
Solar photovoltaic systems use cells to convert sunlight into electricity. A photovoltaic cell has one or two layers of a semi-conducting material, which is usually silicon. When light shines on the cell, it creates an electric field that causes electricity to flow.
All up, the CSIRO plans to install five megawatts of grid-connected, on-site renewable energy across its building portfolio by 2020.
"A key opportunity exists for CSIRO to hedge against the predicted upward price trend in electricity prices by investing today in alternative renewable energy sources to power their sites," the tender documents say.
"The installation of large scale on-site renewable energy generation is a key mechanism to reduce CSIRO’s carbon footprint."
A report released by the independent not-for-profit Climate Council, released on Tuesday, shows the ACT has the third-lowest rooftop solar penetration rate in the country, at 14.2 per cent.
