Utility Scale PV

Sydney’s City of Canterbury-Bankstown has opened an expression of interest period as it seeks the development of a single contract urban solar farm to boost its growing solar uptake.

A massive solar+storage project nearby Uralla in the New England region of New South Wales has been given the tick of approval from the Independent Planning Commission. Project developer UPC/AC Renewables Australia says construction is likely to commence towards the middle of the year.

Despite a sizable pipeline of big PV projects, many EPCs have found it difficult to escape the pitfalls of Australia’s notoriously competitive market. The turmoil in the solar construction sector became evident with the collapse of the nation’s leading contractor RCR Tomlinson. It was further emphasized by Tempo Australia’s problems and last month’s withdrawal of Sydney-based contractor Downer Group. As the survival of the fittest continues, Mumbai-based EPC juggernaut Sterling and Wilson Solar (SWSL) is confident it has found a way to adapt and thrive.

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.