Rural Queensland is ready for a new age of solar power.

The small town of Collinsville in north Queensland has a long history of coal mining, but it is now poised to turn into a major solar centre.

RATCH Australia Corporation's 43MW Collinsville Solar Project is moving ahead, after Australian Renewable Energy Agency funding was secured last year.

It is one of several major solar projects in rural Queensland, where companies are keen to access the 300 days a year of pure sunshine on offer.

The Collinsville project is looking at using infrastructure from a decommissioned power station on the town’s outskirts to pump energy directly into the Queensland grid.

Proponent Edify Energy says construction of phase one should star soon.

The nine-month build time is expected to provide around 200 jobs, but there will be just ten on staff once the system is in use.

The $122 million first phase will include about 500 acres’ worth of solar power, but Edify has plans for future phases across its huge 10,000 acre site.

Queensland Energy Minister Mark Bailey is on board.

“The Collinsville solar farms are important contributions to us managing a clean energy economy and transitioning to a 50 per cent renewable energy mix over the next 14 years,” he said.

“We're at 7 per cent now — 14 years is a considerable amount of time and we're not mucking about, we're getting on with this.”

While the solar dawn is coming, Collinsville still relies on coal.

The local economy has been buoyed by the announcement of 200 jobs at Glencore's Collinsville Coal Mine, and there is much expectation for jobs at Adani's Carmichael coal mine in the Galilee Basin, if it goes ahead.