The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has announced up to AU$105.6 million (US$70.5 million) for 20 research and development projects aimed at reducing the cost of large-scale solar.
The agency has described the financing as its largest single investment in solar PV research and development to date.
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The funding will support R&D projects that improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance stability across advanced cells and modules, alongside innovations aimed at lowering the cost of building, operating, and maintaining solar PV power plants and reducing the levelised cost of electricity (LCOE).
The investment builds on ARENA’s ultra-low-cost solar (UCLS) ambition, which targets an installed solar cost of 30 cents per watt by 2030, as part of the agency’s broader “30-30-30” vision of 30% module efficiency and an LCOE below AU$20 per megawatt-hour.
ARENA acting CEO Chris Faris said the projects would help ensure Australia remained at the forefront of solar innovation while addressing challenges facing the renewable energy industry.
“Achieving ultra-low-cost solar requires innovation across the entire value chain,” Faris said.
“From the solar cells and modules themselves through to the way solar farms are built, operated and maintained, these projects will help unlock practical solutions that support a faster, more affordable energy transition.”
ARENA said it had initially allocated AU$60 million to the Ultra Low-Cost Solar PV Research and Development Funding Round before expanding the pool in response to the quality of applications received.
Stream 1: Cells and modules
| Applicant | Project | ARENA funding (AU$m) | Total project cost (AU$m) |
|---|---|---|---|
| ANU | Low-cost parallel-connected perovskite/silicon tandems | 7.1 | 19.2 |
| ANU | TOPCon back contact silicon cells | 6.0 | 17.4 |
| UNSW | Low-temperature interconnection solution for advanced PV modules | 5.4 | 12.4 |
| UNSW | UV resilience and efficiency boost for silicon | 7.1 | 18.6 |
| UNSW | Field-testing of commercial perovskite & tandem module for stability | 5.6 | 18.0 |
| UNSW | Supercharging solar module durability for Australian conditions | 6.5 | 21.7 |
| UNSW | Efficient and stable perovskite/Si tandem PV for cell stability | 6.3 | 20.7 |
| UNSW | Advancing tandem cells via ML-assisted contactless measurements and Industry 4.0 | 5.1 | 16.3 |
| UNSW | Scalable Cu-based chalcogenide/Si tandem solar cell | 6.3 | 18.4 |
| UNSW | AI-accelerated PV material discovery | 5.2 | 19.9 |
| UNSW | Passivating and shuttling interlayers to increase efficiency | 5.1 | 17.0 |
| University of Melbourne | Spectral utilisation for next-gen silicon | 4.8 | 13.2 |
| University of Sydney | Silicon tandems – built to last | 7.4 | 19.5 |
Stream 2: Balance of systems and O&M
| Applicant | Project | ARENA funding (AU$m) | Total project cost (AU$m) |
|---|---|---|---|
| ANU | AI-enabled reliability and yield increase for utility-scale PV | 2.9 | 8.5 |
| Sunspense Pty Ltd | Lightweight bifacial laminate PV system for utility scale | 3.6 | 7.7 |
| Proa Energy Australia Pty Ltd | HiveOps platform for O&M optimisation and LCOE reduction | 4.2 | 10.5 |
| UNSW | Site-tailored modules to reduce cost in utility-scale deployment | 4.4 | 13.9 |
| UNSW | Enhancing utility-scale PV O&M with advanced ML models, risk maps, and AIoT | 4.7 | 16.7 |
| UNSW | Innovative daylight PL image acquisition and advanced quantitative data analysis | 3.1 | 8.5 |
| University of Melbourne | Intelligent modular platform for solar PV | 4.8 | 12.9 |
Twenty projects split across cell technology and project delivery costs
As detailed in the tables above, the funding is split across two streams. Stream 1 covers cells and modules, targeting improved efficiency, reduced cost, and better stability, with 13 projects awarded to research institutions, including the University of New South Wales (UNSW), the Australian National University (ANU), the University of Melbourne and the University of Sydney.
The largest single grant, AU$7.4 million, went to the University of Sydney for work on durable silicon tandem cells, while ANU received AU$7.1 million for parallel-connected perovskite/silicon tandem research.
UNSW, which leads the bulk of the funded cell and module projects, is also pursuing work spanning AI-accelerated PV material discovery, chalcogenide-based tandem cells and UV resilience improvements for silicon.
Stream 2 addresses balance-of-system deployment costs, operations and maintenance, and other approaches to reducing LCOE or improving yield, with seven projects funded across ANU, UNSW, the University of Melbourne and two commercial applicants, Sunspense and Proa Energy Australia.
That stream targets a cost category that ARENA has separately identified as a growing constraint on Australia’s solar sector.
An ARENA white paper published in July 2026 found that Australia’s weighted-average installed cost for utility-scale solar had stalled at AU$1.52 per watt, with balance-of-system costs, covering labour, civil works, grid connection and project delivery, now the dominant component of total project costs and largely resistant to reduction even as module prices continued to fall.
That earlier white paper found laboratory cell efficiencies had reached 27.9%, with commercially available modules hitting 26.2% in 2025, up from 22% in 2022, but concluded that cost reduction now depends more on construction methods and system integration than on module pricing.
ARENA general manager solar Dan Sturrock made a similar point at the Smart Energy Conference 2026 in May, telling delegates that Australia needs utility-scale solar generation costs to roughly halve, to around AU$25-30/MWh on an LCOE basis, to unlock the 10GW of annual capacity additions the agency judges necessary for decarbonisation, rather than the 2-3GW currently reaching financial close each year.
The new funding round adds to a broader portfolio of ARENA-backed solar innovation initiatives.
In June 2026, ARENA committed a further AU$95.4 million to extend the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics (ACAP) through to 2033, a UNSW-led consortium that has been credited with a series of globally recognised advances in cell efficiency, durability and tandem cell technology since its establishment in 2012.
ARENA’s AU$1 billion Solar Sunshot programme, which targets domestic manufacturing capacity across the solar supply chain, has separately been described as a mechanism that could reshape Australia from a solar consumer into a manufacturing hub, spanning module production, polysilicon feasibility studies and ingot and wafer manufacturing.
Together, the research funding round, the ACAP extension and the Solar Sunshot programme represent parallel strands of a broader ARENA strategy aimed at closing the gap between Australia’s cell-level research strength and the project-level cost outcomes needed to expand the country’s utility-scale solar pipeline.
