Utility Scale PV

PV’s contribution to a cleaner future can go well beyond generating emissions-free energy, but maximising the opportunity is not always straightforward. Ragna Schmidt-Haupt, partner at Everoze and a board member at Skyray, argues that investors and lenders have to start making decisions today to fulfil the required disclosure regulations and make sure their fleet has a positive impact on biodiversity. The key challenge is to weigh the techno-economic-ecological risks, opportunities, costs and revenues.

The project includes a solar park coupled with what HDF Energy claims is the “largest green hydrogen storage of intermittent electricity sources” at 128 MWh. Importantly, the company also simultaneously announced expansion plans into Australia, saying its hydrogen technology will soon be available here, adding that it has “projects already in development for Australia”.

Spanish energy group Iberdrola has added another utility scale project to its Australian portfolio with the purchase of the 190 MW Avonlie Solar Farm in New South Wales from UK-based developer Renewable Energy Systems Group (RES).

As solar deployment increases, concerns about price cannibalisation continue to be more and more relevant. Large-scale solar generation during midday hours may result in curtailment or unprofitable wholesale power prices. As supply increases, the economic viability of solar PV projects could fall into question.

The Australian-Singapore group behind a proposed 20 GW solar PV farm and 42 GWh battery energy storage project being developed in Australia’s remote far north has hinted other, similar-sized projects are already in the pipeline.

Vattenfall is leading a Dutch consortium in a research project to assess whether agrivoltaics is also compatible with strip cropping. The company’s head of Solar Development NL, Annemarie Schouten, spoke with pv magazine about the first 0.7 MW pilot project under development in the northern Dutch province of Flevoland.

Mining giant Rio Tinto has confirmed Energy Developments Limited is poised to begin construction of a new solar farm and battery energy storage system that will more than triple the solar PV generation capacity at the Anglo-Australian multinational’s $2.6 billion bauxite mining operation at Weipa in far north Queensland.

Renewables developer Edify Energy has been granted development approval to build and operate a green hydrogen production plant of up to 1 GW, as well as a behind-the-meter solar and battery storage facility within the Lansdown Eco-Industrial Precinct in Townsville, northern Queensland. 

Power and water are a classic utility couple. SA Water has switched up the relationship with another solar plant energised in its massive solar rollout that is set to save on both costs and carbon.

The state-owned engineer and solar EPC Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) has commissioned a 25 MW project at NTPC’s Simhadri thermal power station, in Andhra Pradesh.