The 87 MW Beryl Solar Farm, seven kilometres west of Gulgong in New South Wales, is the latest utility-scale PV project to join the grid. Around 69% of the project’s output will be used to meet the operational electricity needs of the Sydney Metro Northwest railway, while the remaining generation could open up possibilities for alternative PPAs or utilization via battery storage.
“Beryl has reached commercial operations on time and on budget, even accounting for the increase in capacity,” said New Energy Solar CEO John Martin “The offtake is contributing directly to the newly opened Sydney Metro Northwest rail link and we are very pleased to be a part of this major piece of transport infrastructure.”
The Beryl Solar Farm was acquired by ASX-listed solar farm investor New Energy Solar from First Solar last year. Downer Group acted as EPC on the project and began construction last May.
While originally announced the project will use First Solar’s large-format Series 6 modules, a change in module supplier was announced in February. New Energy Solar said it had made a switch to Longi modules, which were installed together with Ingeteam inverters and Exosun tracking technology.
“The use of LONGi modules has allowed for a redesign that will increase the number of modules and thereby increase project installed capacity by 2.5 MWdc from 108.4 MWDcto 11 0.9 MWdc, with a resulting increase in expected annual generation and annual cash yields,” the investor said at the time.
The Beryl Solar Farm is one of the two PV projects in New Energy Solar’s Australian portfolio. The 55.9 MW Manildra project in New South Wales is another project acquired from First Solar. It has been operating since April last year and sells power and Large Scale Generation Certificates (LGCs) to EnergyAustralia under a 10-year PPA with an option to extend out to 2030.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.