The funding for the aged-care residence was one of nine successful grants announced by Member for Hume, Angus Taylor MP for community and sporting groups around the region. 

Phil Armitage from Boorowa Hostel Inc said the installation of solar panels would ease rising electricity costs at Burrowa House. 

“The cost of electricity at a building like Burrowa House has quite large impact on our operating budget. One of the major items is heating and cooling,” he said. 

“In fact, we’ve been wanting to do it for two or three years but we haven’t really been able to afford it so when the last lot of grants came out for Stronger Communities I put in a grant request for that. 

“So we’re getting about $9000 from the government and we have to put $9000 in ourselves.” 

He said he is thankful for the government’s support. 

“We’re very pleased, it';s something we really have to do,” he said. 

“We’re very happy to have received the grant and very grateful to the government for making that grant.” 

Phil predicts the hostel will receive 20 panels from the funding and is hoping they can be upgraded throughout the years as technology becomes more advanced. 

“In the future, as battery technology improves, we may well get more solar panels and charge batteries and things,” he said. 

Phil says the next step will be applying for grants to install a generator at the site. 

“We will be looking at other sources of grants to get a generator,” he said. 

“There’s a lot of talk about the effect of power cuts to power supplies and we really need 100% safe power supply for Burrowa House. 

“We sometimes have people on oxygen here and if we have a power cut and they need oxygen, we have to send them to the hospital.”

Local tradesman Tim Berry will be doing the installation of the solar panels in the near future. 

The team at Boorowa Hostel Inc have also just completed a $120,000 fitting of an irrigation system to the cottages, which will supply bore water to keep the yards green all year long.