Renewable energy developer Elgin Energy has seen a 330MW solar-plus-storage site featuring a 250MW/500MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) fast-tracked by the Victoria government in Australia.
The Barwon Solar Farm, which was successful in the first Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS) tender last year, will be located in the Little River region of Victoria, 44km southwest of Melbourne’s Central Business District.
Enjoy 12 months of exclusive analysis
- Regular insight and analysis of the industry’s biggest developments
- In-depth interviews with the industry’s leading figures
- Annual digital subscription to the PV Tech Power journal
- Discounts on Solar Media’s portfolio of events, in-person and virtual
Or continue reading this article for free
A co-located 250MW/500MWh BESS has been fast-tracked as part of the application. The BESS will include approximately 136 inverters built on concrete foundations.
Elgin said the development’s location has abundant solar resources, making it ideal for a solar PV power plant. The 735-hectare site also has direct proximity to grid capacity that can support a large project, with 500kV and 220kV transmission lines passing through it, enabling the project to connect to the National Electricity Market (NEM).
Around 540,690 ground-mounted solar PV modules will be installed using single-axis tracking technology. Once mounted on the frames and fully tilted, the modules will be capable of reaching an overall height of no more than 3.2 metres above ground level.
Elgin initially hoped the project would be operational in 2025; however, it noted this was subject to planning approval.
The Barwon PV plant has been fast-tracked via the Victoria government’s Development Facilitation Program pathway after the minister for planning, Sonya Kilkenny, gave the green light.
This initiative, which was expanded last year to include renewable energy projects, aims to speed up the development of critical infrastructure projects in Victoria. Several BESS sites have been fast-tracked through this scheme, including Birdwood Energy’s 1.8GWh battery, which is being pursued as part of the wider Baranduda Energy Reserve development.
Alongside this, Energy-Storage.news reported in late August that ACEnergy saw its 350MW/700MWh Joel Joel project fast-tracked.
160MWh solar-plus-storage site submitted to Australia’s EPBC Act
In other news, Australian renewable energy developer Edify Energy has submitted an 80MW solar-plus-storage project featuring a 160MWh BESS in New South Wales to the Australian government’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.
The Peninsula Solar Farm, which received approval from the New South Wales government last year, will also include the construction of a 132kV substation. The battery system is likely to be lithium-ion.
Around 192,000 solar PV modules will be mounted on single-axis-tracking structures. These will be interconnected to form solar arrays with a generation capacity of either 4MW or 8MW.
It is located southeast of Forbes in the Central West Orana region, 374km west of the state capital, Sydney. It will be situated in the Central-West Orana Renewable Energy Zone (REZ) and leverage the network infrastructure being built to connect to the NEM. The capacity of this REZ increased at the start of the year, enabling 7.7GW of projects to connect.
The AU$195 million (US$122 million) project is estimated to take around 16 months to complete. This will be split into two months of site mobilisation, five and a half months of site setup, two and a half months of solar PV module and battery construction, and six months of substation construction.
These articles first appeared in full on our sister site, PV Tech, as the items ‘Victoria fast-tracks approval for 330MW solar-plus-storage site in Australia’ and ‘Edify Energy submits 80MW solar-plus-storage site to Australia’s EPBC Act’.
