Australian renewable energy developer Edify Energy has submitted an 80MW solar-plus-storage project 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 feature an integrated 80MW/160MWh battery energy storage system (BESS). The proposal also includes the construction of a 132kV substation.
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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. Edify confirmed that the battery system will likely be lithium-ion.
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 National Electricity Market (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.
Once complete, the solar-plus-storage site will have an operational lifespan of 30 years or more and sit across 235 hectares of land predominantly used for grazing and crops.
After a year of operation, Edify intends to introduce agrivoltaics (agriPV) and invite around 1,000 merino sheep to graze at the surrounding site boundary, similar to Edify’s plans at the 250MW Muskerry Solar Power Station in Victoria. At the end of its operational lifespan, the site will be decommissioned.
The submission of the Peninsula solar PV plant to the EPBC Act comes days after the developer submitted plans for a 100MW solar-plus-storage project, called Burroway Solar Farm, to the EPBC Act. The project is also being proposed for the Central-West Orana REZ and will be located 27km west of Dubbo. It will be located around 200km north of the Peninsula solar PV plant.
Construction on the Burroway project is expected to take approximately 18 months and commence in the 2026/27 financial year. The peak construction period will be over six to nine months to allow for the gradual development and commissioning of the facility. Construction will be undertaken in four stages.
The EPBC Act, administrated by the Federal government, aims to protect nationally threatened species and ecological communities under the Act. This must be accepted before being granted permission to develop a project.
