Renewables developer Potentia Energy has announced that construction partner Beon Energy Solutions has installed the final solar panel at its Quorn Park project, the first large-scale solar and battery hybrid power plant connected to Australia’s main electricity grid.
“After six months of work, nearly 161,000 panels are now in place at the site,” the company said, adding that the milestone marks “a significant moment towards delivering one of Australia’s most advanced hybrid renewable energy projects.”
The $190 million (USD 134 million) Quorn Park facility, located about 10 kilometres northwest of Parkes in central west New South Wales, combines an 80 MW solar farm with a 20 MW / 40 MW battery energy storage system.
The facility is the first solar and battery project built on the National Electricity Market (NEM) that shares a single point of connection under the one Generator Performance Standard (GPS).
Potentia, a joint venture owned by Italian utilities major Enel Group and Japanese oil and gas giant Inpex, said the project demonstrates how renewable energy and battery storage can work together to deliver reliable, cost-effective support to the grid.
“By storing solar energy generated during the day and dispatching it during evening peaks, the project will strengthen grid reliability while delivering enough clean energy to power around 45,000 homes in NSW every year,” the company said.
Potentia said the commissioning phase is now well underway with electrical testing, validation and compliance checks to continue over the coming months with full operations anticipated in the last quarter of 2026.
Supported by a long‑term power purchase agreement with South Australia-headquartered renewable energy gen-tailer Zen Energy, the hybrid plant is expected to deliver about 200 GWh of clean electricity annually.
The Quorn Park project is part of Potentia’s growing portfolio of assets across Australia with the developer aiming to build more than 7 GW of renewable energy projects in the country, targeting investments in wind, solar, storage, and hybrid technologies.
Included in its development pipeline are the Tallawang and Narrandera solar and battery hybrid projects in western NSW.
The Tallawang project proposes to combine a 500 MW solar farm with a 500 MW / 1,000 MWh battery while the Narrandera project would have the generation capacity of approximately 200 MW and would include a 400 MW / 1,600 MWh battery energy storage system.
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.