Research firm Rystad Energy has revealed that the top five performing utility-scale solar PV power plants, in terms of AC capacity factor, in April 2025 were all based in Queensland.
The top five performing assets were X-Elio’s 200MW Blue Grass solar PV plant, Greek industrial conglomerate Mytilineos’ 110MW Moura solar PV plant, Hana Financials’ 162MW Columboola PV plant, the 168MW Western Downs solar PV power plant and Eneos’ 204MW Edenvale solar PV plant.
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The reasons behind the Blue Grass PV plant being the top-performing asset have not been disclosed. However, the regional council attributes its success to the “fantastic conditions” for renewable energy production in the Western Downs region of Queensland.
Located in Hopeland, the solar PV plant is operated by X-Elio, which plans to enhance its strong generation potential by adding a 350MW solar-plus-storage project called Sixteen Mile near the existing facility.
Rystad Energy also selected X-Elio’s Blue Grass solar PV plant as the top-performing solar PV asset in terms of AC capacity factor in 2024. In second place was the Moura PV plant, which is also included in the top five list for April 2025.
The Moura solar PV power plant is located 6.5km southwest of Banana, a rural town in central Queensland. The town gets its name from a well-known working bullock who went by the same name in the 1850s.
Moura was initially owned by OX2 before it was acquired by Mytilineos, now known as Metlen Energy and Metals, in December 2020. Metka EGN, a part of Metlen, constructed the project, which commenced commercial operation in 2022.
The third-ranked best-performing solar PV asset in April is the 162MW Columboola solar PV plant owned by South Korea’s Hana Financial Investment. The organisation acquired the project from developer Luminous Energy in 2020.
Queensland government-owned CS Energy secured 100% of the power plant’s output and currently sells it to commercial and industrial retail customers such as Griffith University, CQUniversity, and Queensland University of Technology.
Renewables reach 39% in the NEM
April also saw further growth in renewables in the electricity mix. Rystad said this increased by 39% month-on-month in the National Electricity Market (NEM). At a state level, New South Wales was in the top spot, generating 1,107GWh, 614GWh from utility-scale solar PV and 493GWh from wind.
Battery energy storage system (BESS) output has also started to capture a large portion of the peaking generation market. This is notable given that a substantial amount of operational battery capacity, totalling 2.2GW, is still undergoing commissioning, while over 6GW is under construction and yet to be energised, Rystad analyst David Dixon said on LinkedIn.
Last week, PV Tech Premium analysed the generation of utility-scale and rooftop solar PV in the NEM and Western Australia’s South West Interconnected System (SWIS) during April.
According to the data, which had been sourced from Open Electricity, formerly known as OpenNEM, solar generation in the NEM was up 13% year-on-year. Indeed, utility-scale and rooftop solar PV generation hit 3,440GWh in April, slightly lower than the 3,859GWh recorded in March 2025, a decrease of 419GWh month-on-month. This generation capacity supported the growing number of renewables in the electricity mix.
