The Australian arm of France-headquartered renewable energy and storage developer Neoen has announced that the 350 MW (440 MWp) Culcairn Solar Farm project built in southern New South Wales (NSW) has commenced the commissioning process.
“It is time to start supplying our first electrons from this asset into NSW’s electricity network,” Neoen Australia said in a linkedin post. “We are excited to commence the commissioning of Neoen’s second largest solar farm in Australia.”
The Culcairn solar plant, located about 40 kilometres north of Albury, comprises nearly 760,000 panels and 100,000 piles installed across more than 1,000 hectares. The project, that also includes an option for an up to 800 MWh battery energy storage system, will connect to the National Electricity Market (NEM) via an existing 330 kV transmission line that crosses the project area.
Neoen Australia says the Culcairn Solar Farm is expected to be fully operational by 2026 and is forecast to generate 822,000 MWh of clean energy per annum – sufficient to power 160,000 homes.
The project is underpinned by a four-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with independent energy retailer SmartestEnergy that has agreed to purchase 50% of the project’s capacity. SmartestEnergy said the contract will help it meet the growing demand for renewable energy solutions from commercial and industrial customers.
The PPA is complemented by a Long-Term Energy Services Agreement under the NSW government’s Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap, which provides Neoen with financial certainty through a fixed minimum price.
The Culcairn Solar Farm is the second largest solar asset in Neoen’s global portfolio, edged out by the 400 MW PV project that forms part of the Western Downs Green Power Hub, that is already in operation in southwest Queensland.
Neoen, which has agreed to a majority takeover from Canadian asset manager Brookfield, is arguably Australia’s most successful solar, wind and storage developer with more than 4 GW in operation or under construction across the country.
Its operational assets include the Coleambally, Griffith, Parkes and Dubbo solar farms in NSW, along with multiple battery energy storage systems and wind farms in NSW, Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia.
The company is aiming to have 10 GW of large-scale solar and wind and battery energy storage capacity in Australia by the end of the decade as part of a multi-billion-dollar forward investment plan.
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.
1 comment
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.