NSW starts going solar -- finally

The Bungala Solar Farm (source PV Mag)

In recent years, the government of the state of New South Wales has been on the right, run by the misleadingly-labelled Liberal Party.  The Liberal Party doesn't believe in climate change and still believes, despite the evidence, that coal is cheaper than renewables.  But NSW has the oldest coal-fired generators and the biggest percentage of such generators in Australia which will need to close down over the next decade or so.  Something needs to be done, and soon.

Well, first, after seeing the utter trouncing the denialist (more right-wing) Liberal Party got in the Victorian state election, and seeing apparently safe NSW Federal seats fall to "liberal-light" independents in by-elections, the NSW Liberal Party has suddenly seen the light and is busy embracing renewables.  More to the point, the economics of wind and solar just keep on improving.   Solar is less than half the cost of new coal, which means it will make no economic sense to replace aging coal power stations with new ones.  Large-scale solar is taking off in NSW, finally.

There are a few problems.  NSW doesn't have the wind resources of its neighbouring states of South Australia and Victoria, so to balance solar with wind it will need to import wind-generated electricity from them.  That means upgrades to the grid, which take time to build out.  A solar farm can be built in a few months, but HVDC lines takes a couple of years at least.  Plus, the best solar resources in NSW aren't close to the population centres on the eastern seaboard (where it gets much more rain) but in the drier interior, also far away from the centres of demand.  Again, new long-distance power lines are needed.  A partial fix is storage.  Power lines are designed to handle maxima, so if you could spread the midday maximum output from a solar farm over 24 hours, you could permit more solar to enter the mix.  If solar farms added enough storage, they could send electricity from the outback at night, when the long-distance grid is underutilised, and so could be larger.  We'll see whether the governments involved actually get their act together and start strengthening the grid and the interconnectors between NSW, Victoria and South Australia.  In the meantime, the short-term fix is more storage, though it's not yet cheap enough for large-scale deployment.

From PV Magazine:

In the final days of 2018, Australia’s New South Wales government gave its tick of approval for the construction of the state’s largest solar farm to date, rounding off a year that saw a flurry of utility-scale solar construction activity and an unprecedented number of big solar additions in the state.

The hotbed of utility-scale solar activity, New South Wales, waved through a massive 900 MW solar farm in the last days of 2018, looking to make another major step in its transition to a cleaner energy future.

The Yarrabee Solar Farm costing almost $1 billion will be located in southwest of Narrandera in the Riverina region of western NSW. The project is said to have the potential to power a city of almost one million people.

“When built, this new solar farm will have the capacity to power a city nearly twice the size of Newcastle,” NSW Minister for Energy Don Harwin said welcoming the construction approval.

The Yarrabee project was proposed by Australian developer Reach Solar Energy, which also stands behind the development of the 220 MW/275 MWdc Bungala Solar Project – Australia’s largest completed solar farm to date, which was later acquired by Italian power utility Enel and the Dutch Infrastructure Fund.

According to the project’s environmental impact statement, construction will be dependent on various factors, including power purchase agreements and availability of high voltage transmission network.   
It will cover up to 2600 hectares with approximately 3 million solar PV panels mounted on around 36,000 single-axis tracking systems.

The project will feature 222 inverter stations dispersed across the site. There are also plans for a battery storage system of 35 MW/70 MWh capacity.

The project approval followed the release of a new Large-Scale Solar Energy Guidelines developed by the NSW government to lead applicants and the community through the assessment process and site selection for state significant solar farm proposals.

“The new guideline reflects the NSW Government’s strong commitment to NSW’S booming solar energy market,” Harwin said.

It also followed a number of other big PV approvals granted in late December, including: a massive solar+storage project at Darlington Point – a 275 MW solar farm coupled with 100 MWh energy storage facility, the 140 MW Mulwala Solar Farm, the 170 MW Suntop Solar Farm and the 47 MW Gregadoo Solar Farm, rounding off another big solar year for NSW.

According to the government data, six solar farms were commissioned in 2018 alone, representing 305 MW and $475 million in investment, placing the total operating large-scale solar capacity in NSW at around 500 MW coming from nine projects.

Another seven solar farms were under construction representing 530 MW and around $720 million in investment, while there were almost 70 more solar farms with, or seeking, planning approval in NSW, with capacity to generate more than 10,000 MW.

[Read more here]

This single solar farm will provide about 15% of NSW's demand.  Another 3 or 4 will take NSW's renewables penetration to the levels already reached in South Australia, though there it's mostly wind-sourced.  It looks perfectly achievable within the next decade or less.