South Australia

South Australia’s Tailem Bend Solar Project has reached financial close, having signed a PPA for 100% of its output with Snowy Hydro. Construction on the project, located 100km south-east of Adelaide, will begin in February 2018.

With all eyes still on the world’s largest lithium-ion battery at the Hornsdale wind farm, South Australia now readies to raise the game with its first big battery built in conjunction with a solar farm.

While the Hornsdale Power Reserve “is doing its job” and is performing as expected, owner Neoen has urged market observers not jump to conclusions as to its profitability based on its arbitrage trading over the short term.

The proposed 50,000 home virtual power plant launched by the South Australian state government, in partnership with Tesla, is a big deal. But it does beg a number of questions as to how it will be realized and what the implications of the project could be.

South Australia could play host to the world’s largest deployment of residential solar+storage in the form of a virtual power plant. The scheme, announced by SA Premier Jay Weatherill on the election campaign trail, could see 250 MW of rooftop PV and 650 MWh of battery storage added to 50,000 homes over 4.5 years.

Last week, the chimney from one of the last coal fired power plants in South Australia was felled. The demolition, captured in the footage below, came only days after Jay Weatherill attended the opening of the state’s first utility scale solar array in the region.

It’s just over one month since the Hornsdale power reserve was officially opened in South Australia. The excitement surrounding the project has generated acres of media interest, both locally and abroad.

Large-scale storage began to gain a lot of attention in 2017, particularly after Elon Musk’s famed ‘100 days’ tweet back in March. Now that this project has proved an initial success, it looks like more big batteries are on the way for the National Electricity Market (NEM).

South Australia’s water utility will install a trial floating PV array on its Happy Valley Reservoir. The 100 kW system will be installed in 2018 and is a part of the utility’s plans, announced today, to reduce its net electricity costs to zero by 2020.

Last Friday, the “world’s largest” lithium-ion battery was officially opened in South Australia. Tesla’s much anticipated “mega-battery” made the 100 days or it’s free deadline, after a week of testing and commissioning.