The ground-breaking milestone follows the construction of a new $6 million gas pipeline in the area by Australian Gas Networks (AGN).
“Our new pipeline into McLaren Vale is great news for local businesses and households in the area,” said AGN Company Secretary and Manager Business Services Geoff Barton.
“For the first time, they can connect directly to natural gas that will be running straight past their properties, saving them the more costly and cumbersome task of having to use bottled LPG,”
“AGN has been delighted with the response it has been receiving from property owners keen to hook up to natural gas as soon as they can.
“We anticipate that interest will continue to increase as more of our pipeline comes on line and more people in the region become aware that they can now connect to natural gas.”
Mr Barton said a major component of the McLaren Vale project involves the construction of about 18 km of reticulation pipeline to make natural gas available to the majority of commercial and residential properties within the township.
This commenced in 2016 and will take up to two years to complete.
In a separate $6 million project only a few kilometres away, AGN has undertaken a significant upgrade to the Seaford-Aldinga gas network – the main gas pipeline supplying Adelaide’s southern coastal region including Seaford, Aldinga and Seaford Meadows – to improve/increase gas supplies to thousands of homes and businesses in the region.
AGN’s investment in increased capacity for McLaren Vale and Adelaide’s southern suburbs will allow more households and businesses to connect to gas, and will deliver more natural gas to existing customers.
In the McLaren Vale region alone, AGN expects up to 1,500 new customers will connect to natural gas over the next 20 years.
The neighbouring Seaford Aldinga high pressure network – which currently supplies over 15,000 consumers – now has additional capacity to connect a further 11,000 new customers over the same period.