Utility Scale PV

UK-based infrastructure investor John Laing will make no further investments in standalone solar and wind, following the write-downs taken on its European and Australian projects.

The developer has confirmed a nearly $30 million write-down on its troubled Kennedy Energy Park and entered into a binding agreement on a $1 a share takeover bid from a consortium that includes Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest’s Squadron Energy.

With a Commonwealth MoU in hand and a ‘flexible’ attitude to the regulatory processes governing transmission build in Australia’s National Electricity Market, the NSW Department of Planning and Environment is revving up its plans to develop a demonstrator Renewable Energy Zone.

South Australia is seeing a surge of small-scale utility solar as the niche, particularly around the 5MW mark, can fly under the radar of much of the electricity network’s congestion woes. The newly completed Mannum Solar Farm Project is one such example.

The Australian network rule maker has ignored the plea of some of the biggest solar and wind project owners in Australia to change the way marginal loss factors (MLFs) are calculated. While it has acknowledged that transmission has failed to keep up the pace with renewable energy investment, it did not come up with any suggestion on what should be done to ameliorate the problem.

‘First Solar, at its core, is a technology and module manufacturing company,’ said Mark Widmar, chief executive of the U.S. company.

Many more renewable generators than originally thought are in a holding pattern as a result of oscillation problems in the weak-grid, high-resource area known as the West Murray. State Governments, AEMO and the renewables industry have hunkered down to find solutions that will also find application elsewhere in the grid as connection fever mounts.

The debate now stewing in the Australian Parliament around the viability and cost of setting a target of net-zero emissions by 2050 is again proving a case of too little vision applied too late. A new forum casts all participants as “leaders” and as it seeks to accelerate emissions reduction opportunities today.

Australian renewables developer Maoneng and Chinese module maker and EPC contractor Chint have mandated $200 million for an initial project as part of a series of utility-scale solar farms they aim to develop in Australia under a joint venture partnership.

The Victorian government has decided to break away from national electricity rules and introduce legislation that will fast-track priority projects like grid-scale batteries and transmission upgrades and make room for more large-scale solar and wind on the grid. The announced reforms have prompted a flurry of reactions.