Electricians and backpackers sound alarm about unsafe conditions on solar farms

Workers have told the ABC about safety concerns on solar farm sites. (ABC News: Hamish Cole, generic file photo)

Canadian backpacker Alana Delisle clearly remembers the moment she started questioning whether working on an industrial solar farm in remote Queensland was putting her life at risk.

“It was over 40 degrees, there were 60-kilometre gust winds — and they still wanted you to put 25 kilo solar panels on,” she said.

The 29-year-old is one of more than 10,000 international visitors since 2019 who have taken up temporary construction-work jobs to extend their working holiday maker visa for another year.

Work on solar farms can be lucrative for backpackers hoping to top up their savings.

The sites offer good hourly rates — with accommodation and meals covered — as well as the potential to work 60-plus hours a week.

But backpackers and electricians say there are major safety issues at many of these remote solar sites.

Ms Delisle said working on remote sites often meant she was exposed to dangerous work conditions.

“You are under so much pressure to achieve targets and get the farm built as fast as you can so the company doesn’t go over its delivery date and get fined,” she said.

That pressure sometimes led to near misses.

One of Ms Delisle’s jobs was labelling the stainless-steel cables that would eventually connect the fields of solar panels to a power source.

At one site, the backpacker and her co-workers had serious concerns about being electrocuted.

“Solar farm is one term, but it’s also a power station when it actually goes live,” Ms Delisle said.

“We got to an area where the cables looked partially plugged into another set of cables, which would be live because they were already plugged into the solar panel.

“I knew something wasn’t right, so we called in the electricians to check it out.”

Ms Delisle’s intuition was lucky; the on-site electrician later confirmed the cabling was dangerous.

People doing electrical work who ‘shouldn’t be’

Workers and Electrical Trades Union (ETU) officials have also told the ABC there are major safety issues with the way labour is managed at many of these remote solar sites.

Ms Delisle worked on 10 different solar projects during five years, in Victoria, NSW and Queensland.

The Canadian said she witnessed a blurring of the line between the jobs of an electrician and that of the labourer, known on site as a trade assistant.

“Frankly, you had people doing electrical work that shouldn’t be,” she said.

“Whether it’s doing work that they’re not actually qualified to do because they don’t know any better, or working in an industry where you really do not know the rules.”

Electricians call out work conditions and ‘expendable labour’

Dean Ison, 29, from Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, has worked as an electrician across commercial, domestic and mining operations.

He said he took on a fly-in-fly-out role on a remote solar farm in regional Queensland, but the experience was so unhappy, he no longer works with the solar industry.

Mr Ison felt his expertise and safety advice was ignored.

“You are labour hire,” he said.

“It feels like your electrical licenses go out the window and you just become an expendable bit of labour … they only have you on site because they’re legally obligated to have electricians on site.

“If they could get rid of you and just have the whole farm built by backpackers, they absolutely would.”

Mr Ison said he had seen trade assistants perform work that should only be done by a qualified electrician.

“[Trade assistants] aren’t able to make any electrical connections or terminations on anything, but I’ve absolutely seen that happen,” he said.

The ABC has confirmed a solar farm safety officer was sent home from a regional site in Queensland after he told management that after a significant rain event in March, the land had become too muddy and slippery to work in.

The safety officer was flown back to Brisbane and the construction team kept operating without a safety officer on site, which the union says is an operational requirement on large projects.

Union: Workers installing panels while knee-deep in water

The ETU visited one project in Queensland and found half the workforce were backpackers on 88-day working holiday visas.

The backpackers were completing electrical works that should only be performed by a qualified electrician, such as connecting terminating earth conductors, accessing electrical boxes with exposed live parts and installing cables.

The breaches were reported to Queensland’s electrical safety office.

Michael Wright, the ETU’s national secretary, said having backpackers who were unqualified performing skilled work put workers at risk.

“What we are talking about is actual electrical work, which should be performed by an electrical licence holder, being performed unsafely and not to standard,” he said.

Mr Wright said the union also found trade assistants working without supervision.

At another project, in Queensland, workers were found installing solar panels while in water up to their knees, creating an electrocution risk.

“We’ve come across the electrical licensing laws being breached by backpackers and other non-electrical workers doing work that is particularly high risk,” Mr Wright said.

“That puts not only themselves in jeopardy, but their co-workers too.”

There are currently 34 solar farms under construction around Australia, which accounts for 3.3 GW of capacity and $4.5 billion in investment.

The ETU wants the renewable energy sector to help pay its way in training the next generation of electricians that it needs for its projects, as a recent report found the sector would need tens of thousands of extra electricians to support the renewable energy transition.

“Most critically, what we need is a consistent pipeline of apprentices coming through,” Mr Wright said.

“Renewables are currently taking more than they give when it comes to apprentices.”

Solar farm industry working on training project

The Clean Energy Council said, unless the ABC provided it with specific details including the date and location of the safety incidents detailed above, it would be unable to provide specific comments, but that the council “expects renewable energy developers, to adhere to all State and Federal regulations and to uphold safety standards to ensure the wellbeing of all workers”.

A spokesperson said that between now and 2030 the industry would need hundreds of thousands of construction workers and an estimated 32,000 electricians to support a transition to clean energy — and most of those workers were needed in regional Australia where levels of available workers varied.

“The construction of a solar farm calls for skilled electricians but also less-skilled workers for tasks like positioning and assembling parts — this can be a real boon for regional communities because it provides entry-level employment opportunities for people without a vocation.”

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