The last of 8000 solar panels are being installed this week and will produce three megawatts a day, enough to power around 2000 homes a year.

The project has been co-developed by Repower Shoalhaven and the Melbourne based energy retailer Flow Power, with 20 per cent of the project's output already purchased by the City of Sydney as part of their renewable energy power purchase, while the rest will be offered to other Shoalhaven businesses.

The first solar farm to be established on the South Coast, the project covers 10 hectares and will generate over 6000 megawatts of clean energy a year.

The solar farm has been established on former contaminated land owned by Shoalhaven City Council, south of Nowra, off BTU Road at Nowra Hill. The land was previously used as a dump site for the former 'night bin' (toilet tin scheme) before the sewerage system was introduced.

Read more:

Twenty jobs have been established during the three month construction phase of the project and when up and running will provide four part-time jobs.

Repower Shoalhaven has entered into a 30-year lease over the site with council, worth $273,000 which has already been paid.

That money is going into council's ongoing renewable energy fund and will be used to further other local renewable energy projects.

Repower Shoalhaven chair Walter Moore is excited the project is almost ready to be commissioned.

"It has been a long process but we are nearly there," he said.

"Some of the energy has been committed as part of the project to the City of Sydney as part of their renewable power purchase with Flow Power.

"At the moment we are looking at getting other local businesses to buy the power through Flow, which will keep all the money and the circular economy going."

Mr Moore said the aim is to target local businesses to access the power, especially those in the nearby Flinders Industrial Estate.

"Repower's target is commercial, industrial premises and try to get them to shift to renewables," he said.

"Any business who spends more than $3000 a month on its electricity bill would be wise to talk to us."

Convenor of sub committee behind the construction the solar farm, Bob Hayward said businesses should be looking to "sign up to renewable energy rather than any other form as part of the transition to decarbonise the economy."

"Flow Power has a phenomenally attractive commercial offering in terms of ensuring their energy costs will not increase over time and in fact will decrease as more and more renewables come onto the grid," he said.

"It's been a long project and has taken a while to get to this point."

The community-finance project has seen investors both locally and further afield raise $500,000 towards the project.

"It's the eighth investment project Repower has been involved in with community finance," Mr Moore said.

"It's the highest amount yet we've raised - our target was $500,000 in community finance for the project and we had 27 investors who took up the offer quickly - in fact we had some missing out, but will be involved in future projects.

"People want to see action and this is a way they can support projects and also get a small return, a reasonable return - we're forecasting a five per cent return on their investment."

Mr Hayward said he was surprised by the take up of investors.

"While the majority are local individuals," he said "with the internet our community is virtually the world, and we also have investors in Queensland and Victoria.

"We reached much further than just the local area, which surprised me - when the invitations came back to participate we saw just how wide the net was."

Flow Power has underpinned the project providing the other $4.5 million and agreed to buy all the power themselves.

Mr Moore said he sees the community/commercial partnership as the "way of the future".

"Believe it or not we couldn't find any support from government for this project at all," he said.

"We are still waiting for government to give us support.

"But I believe we have set a model here and while every case is different, we are certainly looking at replicating more of these in the future.

"Flow has indicated they have an appetite for more projects like this and there is certainly the demand.

"It is one road of many we've got to take to get to a low carbon economy."

Mr Hayward agreed "it is the future".

"The costs of these sorts of schemes is diminishing around 10 per cent a year," he said.

"The panels are now 500 watt panels, whereas when we first looked at this four years ago they were 350 watt panels. The panels are the same cost but the unit energy driven has increased.

"The future is also to put batteries on these schemes and to make sure you get the maximum value for the energy being generated."

Mr Moore said the "aim is to establish similar projects regionally".

"We've got a couple of other sites we've already discussed with council that are possibilities, including the former tip site at North Nowra, low value land," he said.

"This [the Nowra Hill site] was land that was contaminated and derelict so we are turning it into a really productive asset.

"We've got more aims for solar farms here and maybe some smaller projects too, like a microgrid that you could put on the ground and rooftops.

"We've got high ambitions, we want to continue to engage with the community and in particular the business community, where there is a great need.

"The household uptake has been great but business has been a little bit slower."

The Nowra Hill operation is in an "ideal location", it's not far from the nearby Flinders Industrial Estate and adjacent to the grid with high voltage power lines.

Do you have something to say about an issue? Send a letter to the editor. Click here for the South Coast Register, and here for the Ulladulla Times.