Solar PV

The 25 MW / 50 MWh Tesla battery collocated with the 60 MW Gannawarra Solar Farm has been officially commissioned, as the second of the two grid-scale batteries that will provide support to the Victorian grid by the start of this summer. The Gannawarra project is Australia’s largest integrated solar and battery facility.

SUSI Partners AG has fully acquired and provided financing to construct a 34 MW solar PV plant with storage optionality located in Middlemount, Queensland. The investment firm says it views the Australian market as highly attractive, despite policy uncertainty.

Australian developers Energy Estate and MirusWind have proposed a massive renewable energy hub in New South Wales. The project will combine wind and solar energy generation with pumped hydro storage and other storage options to provide up to 4 GW of new clean generation.

UK-based renewable energy developer Eco Energy World has reached financial close on two Queensland projects – the 20 MW Chinchila Solar Farm and the 34 MW Brigalow Solar Farm. Combined, the projects constitute nearly $70 million in capex.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia will source 65% of its power from renewable energy by next year and will go completely green by 2030, as Australia’s first business to join 154 international companies that signed up to the global initiative RE100.

The China-headquartered battery manufacturer has joined Germany’s sonnen as an exclusive approved battery storage provider for the South Australian Home Battery Scheme. Alpha-ESS plans to set up a manufacturing facility in Adelaide, where it will build more than 8000 batteries a year and create up to 120 jobs.

The Newcastle City Council has begun construction on a 5 MW Summerhill solar farm located on a disused landfill that was once part of a coal mine.

The New South Wales government is set to accelerate $2.5 billion worth of transmission projects in order to address grid bottlenecks and unlock low-cost, low-emission generation in new areas of the state. As part of its grid transformation plan, NSW will boost connections with its neighboring states and bring forward the Snowy Hydro scheme.

Coal miner Glencore is failing investors in its latest forecasts.

Only weeks after Victoria’s first big battery was unveiled in Ballarat, the retrofitted 25MW/50MWh Tesla powerpack battery at the Gannawarra Solar Farm was commissioned ahead of schedule, confirms Germany’s Wirsol Energy. The developer’s major solar projects in Victoria have reached milestones: the 60 MW Ganawarra Solar Farm has successfully passed all commissioning tests, and the 110 MW Wemen Solar Farm has been connected to the grid.