Utility Scale PV

Plans to build a large-scale solar farm at Harlin in Queensland’s Somerset Council region continue to gather momentum after Singaporean infrastructure investor Keppel Corporation agreed to pour more than $3 million into the project.

Commercial rooftop solar startup CleanPeak Energy has acquired the 30 MW project location just outside the northern Victorian town of Wangaratta, its first foray into utility-scale solar.

The Australian Energy Market Commission’s latest annual Residential Electricity Price Trends report shows costs reducing as renewable build out replaces inefficient coal-fired generation, and more lowest-cost renewable supply is on the way.

Soon 2020 will only be a worry to future high-school history students. But when they ask us if anything good at all happened in 2020, remember this review and tell them that solar PV shone in the darkness. Despite the mess of it all, 2020 has been another good year for Australian solar. The industry has demonstrated resilience, and significant progress has been made in the fields of energy storage, green hydrogen and others.

A small number of utility-scale PV arrays of an entirely different nature are taking shape Down Under. Over the past six years, Aussie solar startup 5B has been developing and deploying its pre-assembled and relocatable Maverick mounting structures “on a shoestring budget.” But with a major solar developer having joined as a strategic investor, the company is now looking to make prefabricated arrays a mainstream option for utility-scale PV.

Australia has cemented its place at the vanguard of the solar energy industry with a new International Energy Agency (IEA) report confirming the nation has the highest installed solar PV capacity per capita in the world.

Vena Australia has reached financial close on its 100 MW and 150 MWh Wandoan South Big Battery thanks to ING Australia. The international bank is increasingly financing green energy projects but this is the first standalone battery project it has financed in the Asia Pacific. Vena Energy Australia says this phase is just the beginning of a project that is to feature 650 MW of solar PV and 450 MW of battery storage.

The Chinese leader has revealed some details of his nation’s commitment to go carbon neutral by 2060. That solar and wind power promise could even prove to be a conservative estimate, according to the nation’s solar industry.

Hydrogen demand in South Korea is expected to reach 17 million tonnes by 2050. An ambitious solar PV project in the heart of Queensland’s unconventional-gas country, plans to be an early green supplier of the manufacturing nation’s hydrogen needs.

Renewable energy investors have shattered the Queensland Government’s expectations with the state’s Renewable Energy Zones (REZs) attracting more than $90 billion in project proposals.