Utility Scale PV

The Australian arm of German renewable energy specialist juwi has added another off-grid solar PV project to its burgeoning portfolio, announcing it will construct a 13 MW solar farm at the site of the Gruyere gold mine in Western Australia.

Complaints including a lack of women’s hygiene facilities and a precariously dangling shipping container are being taken up by the NSW and ACT Electrical Trades Union after workers say they’ve been met with deaf ears by the company managing the site of the Suntop Solar Farm in NSW’s Central West.

Australia’s transition to renewable energy continues with developer ARP Australian Solar pushing ahead with plans to establish a 70 MW solar PV and battery energy storage project on the outskirts of Morwell in the heart of Victoria’s coal country.

Construction is set to commence on the 250 MW Kidston Pumped Hydro Storage Project later this month after developer Genex Power announced it had secured all the financing required to progress the $775 million project.

Greek energy company Mytilineos and its subsidiary Metka EGN continue to put down roots in the Australian market, signing a Power Purchasing Agreement which will allow construction to commence on its 23 MW extension to Wagga Wagga North Solar Farm. The extension comes after the company was fined in January for breaching its Aboriginal Heritage Impact Permit by commencing works without first notifying Heritage NSW, leading to the destruction of Indigenous artefacts.

Greater dispatchability will be required from solar as it becomes increasingly mainstream worldwide, or investors could experience diminishing returns as a victim of the technology’s success at bearing down on electricity prices.

Pandemic uncertainties have concentrated key solar players and “heightened competition for ‘survival of the fittest'”, says JinkoSolar Chairman and CEO Xiande Li. The company’s latest figures show it is well placed in Australia and in the global arena.

Australia’s solar and wind generation surged in March, according to Rystad Energy’s latest Watts Generating report, and perhaps most importantly a new wave of solar PV — primarily in energy-hungry NSW — is in the commissioning phase to come fully online in coming months.

Call it “latent energy” – Australia’s renewable resources are expected to help some of the world’s greatest polluters to reach their net-zero emissions targets, writes Natalie Filatoff, senior editor at pv magazine Australia.

Giant PV and wind projects are taking shape in Australia’s north, with the aim of supplying Asia with the clean energy it needs for decades to come. The Asian Renewable Energy Hub is one such project, as it targets green hydrogen production at a cost of $1.50/kg. Sacha Thacker, chief strategy officer at InterContinental Energy – one of the companies trying to the get the ambitious initiative off the ground – says that while the scale of projects today boggles the mind, the coming demand is more boggling still.