Lyon’s solar+storage Australian projects reported to attract bids

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Following a string of highly ambitious announcements for solar+storage deployment across Australia, things are starting to take shape for private infrastructure developer Lyon Group. As Reuters reports, citing a company spokesman, the developer had received bids for three major projects, including what would be the world’s largest battery.

“The first three projects in Lyon’s pipeline are in the process of being sold,” Lyon’s spokesman said, but declined to comment on the potential bids and bidders.

The projects in question include: Cape York Solar Storage in Queensland with a solar PV capacity of 55 MW and 20MW/80MWh of battery storage; Nowingi Solar Storage in Victoria with a solar capacity of 250 MW and 80 MW/ 320 MWh; and Riverland Solar Storage with up to 330 MW of solar and 100 MW/ 400 MWh storage in South Australia – which, if commissioned, would be by far the world’s largest solar+battery plant.     

Although earlier in March this year, Lyon Group announced that the beginning of construction of the colossal River Solar Storage project would take place in the coming months, with operations set to commence by the end of 2017, none of the three projects has broken ground to date, and they all currently wait for connection agreements with local transmission companies.

“These are ground-breaking projects, so it’s understandable that connection processes have taken longer than Lyon had hoped at the beginning,” the spokesman said.

According to the Australian Financial Review, Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp, which became Lyon Group’s partner last year with the goal to roll out 1GW of solar + 500 MWh of battery storage by 2020, and two of Japan’s largest power utilities were eyeing the projects.

The tender for the three major projects was heralded earlier this year, when Lyon announced that it was seeking expressions of interest for contracts to cover up to 640MWh of storage capacity at its most advanced projects Victoria, South Australia and Queensland.

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