Australia’s largest solar plant built in NSW in 2018

Australia’s largest solar plant will be built in NSW early next year. It will be a 250MW DC solar photovoltaic power plant with energy storage and installed in NSW’s Sunraysia region. The plant will be built by Decmil on behalf of Chinese company Maoneng Australia, who already have a solar farm in the ACT and are looking to create a second. The Sunraysia solar farm was being discussed back in June (click to view our article about it) and has changed from 200MW to 250MW but will still be located on 1000 hectares of private freehold land 17km south of Balranald centre – approximately 140km south-east of Mildura.

Australia’s largest solar plant

Australia's largest solar plant - Sunraysia Solar Farm
Australia’s largest solar plant – Sunraysia Solar Farm artist’s rendition (source: sunraysiasolarfarm.com.au)

According to Maoneng vice-president Qiao Han, Maoeng Australia and Decmil signed an MOU (Memorandum Of Understanding) on Tuesday. They plan to construct the plant as soon as April or May in 2018 – with the construction contract valued at approximately $275 million. 

The plant is expected to generate at least 530,000 megawatt hours of electricity each year, and will power houses in both NSW and Victoria. Maoneng’s previous Australian solar investment, the 13MW Mugga Lane solar park in the ACT, generates around 24,500 megawatt hours – so this is a big step up. 

There’s talk of the plant also using batteries to store excess power making it one of the first solar farms in New South Wales to do so. According to a statement from Decmil, “This will provide greater energy reliability and allow the solar farm to produce electricity during periods of peak demand rather than only during sunlight hours.”

Large-Scale Solar Farm Competitors

Although this will be Australia’s largest solar plant for a while, there are currently three projects which will be larger when they are completed: 

No doubt before those three are finished we’ll have even bigger plants on the horizon – it’s great watching the neverending race of large-scale solar! 

 

 

 

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Brewongle Solar Farm faces NIMBY opposition.

The Brewongle solar farm, set to be constructed on a 203 hectare parcel of land at Brewongle, is facing staunch opposition from local residents who are concerned they will have to look at it. It’s expected to result in almost 200,000 tonnes of co2 savings and will produce 240GWh of renewable energy per year. The proposed farm has also raised the ire of Brewongle locals who object to its installation on ‘prime agricultural land’. 

Brewongle Solar Farm Proposed Location
Brewongle Solar Farm Proposed Location (source: photonenergy.com.au)

Brewongle Solar Farm

Photon Energy are proposing to build the 146MW solar farm which will finish construction at the end of 2018. Photon have set up a community engagement page to interact with the residents of Brewongle while they try to get development approval for the project. In the meantime, around 80 residents attended a public meeting on Wednesday night to discuss their concerns. Journalist Nadine Morton was at the event and you can click here to view a video of it. 

The Western Advocate quotes a number of residents who ostensibly don’t want ‘prime agricultural land being used for a solar farm’ but seem more concerned with its aesthetic sensibilities (or lack thereof?) – with one saying ‘you will see it from the house’, and another ‘I’m going to see it, I have a vested interest in not seeing it’. No word on what that vested interest is, but presumably the implicit ignominy of renewable energy is particularly galling to Brewongle, given that new solar panels reflect as little as 2% of incoming sunlight and are okay to put on top of airports

Another resident thought it worth noting that ‘…people coming into Bathurst will see it from the railway line’ – perhaps they host the BHP Billiton Bathurst Birthday Bash and are concerned that this brazen display of the future may put off their open-cut coal mine overlords as they gaze out of the train window?

Lastly, the Western Advocate quotes another Brewongle resident who, in classic NIMBY fashion, ‘(doesn’t) think anyone opposes it, it just shouldn’t be on prime land’. Although the video above has poor audio and is a bit difficult to understand, there also appear to be some concerns about subdividing agricultural (rural) land and using it for commercial purposes – so we’ll see how this factors into their argument over the coming weeks and months. 

The residents have called on the Bathurst Regional Council to support them in their noble crusade, despite the fact that final approval will actually come from the NSW Department of Planning and Environment given that it is a ‘project of state significance’. 

Conversely, a more heartening letter to the editor has been published on the Western Advocate website where a Raglan local calls the rationale behind the opposition ‘bizarre’ and described the behaviour at the aforementioned public meeting as ‘somewhat embarrassing’ – which is putting it somewhat mildly.

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$380m Gunning Solar Farm proposed for NSW

Photon Energy are proposing to build a $380 million, 316MW PV Gunning solar farm – about 75km north of Canberra and 50km west of Goulburn.

Gunning Solar Farm Development

The ABC are reporting that Photo Energy have already lodged their initial plans with the NSW Department of Planning. The plans are set on 590 hectares and will encompass ‘hundreds of thousands’ of solar panels. It’s currently going through permit approvals and grid connection processes – according to RenewEconomy they are in discussions with Transgrid with regards to the construction of a 300MW (AC) substation to connect to their (Transgrid’s) network (which is 330KV).

The current largest operating solar PV setup in the southern hemisphere is the Nyngan Solar Plant in western NSW – it is able to generate 104MW. The Sunraysia Solar Farm, currently in pre-development stage as it was approved last month, is slated to generate 200MW – so the Gunning Solar Farm is a huge proposition and we hope that Photon Energy are able to get it over the line.

Photon Energy - Gunning Solar Farm
Photon Energy Logo (source:photonenergy.com.au)

Photon Energy’s MD, Michael Gartner, was quoted in the ABC discussing Australia’s transition to renewables and the Gunning Solar Farm’s role to play in all this: “The reason we’ve gone to that scale is because we see the need to build very large-scale solar generation systems to supplement the energy requirements of the power grid, as we’ve moved forward to the energy transformation away from coal to renewable energy.”

Photon Energy, founded in Prague in 2008 and publicly listed in Poland since 2013,  are hoping to begin construction of the solar farm in 2019, pending DA approval. They’re currently developing multiple solar projects in NSW, have approximately 50MWp of PV plants commissioned in five different countries, and have their own portfolio of 26MWp in three countries. Having operated in Australia for several years already and with successful developments under their belt, it’ll be exciting to see how the Gunning solar farm development goes.

 

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