US solar tracker manufacturer Nextracker has signed an agreement with Australian tube and pipe manufacturer Orrcon Steel to manufacture components of trackers in Australia.
According to Nextracker, “critical steel components” will be produced from BlueScope’s steel coil at Orrcon Steel’s Salisbury Tube mill in Brisbane. BlueScope is a steel supplier and manufacturer and owns Orrcon Steel.
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The components will be finished by Baojia, Nextracker’s manufacturing partner for delivery to engineering procurement contractors, at its Northgate site.
The manufacturing facility has been commissioned with a production capacity of up to 50,000 tonnes of torque tubes, equivalent to more than 2.5GW of utility scale solar PV plants.
“Our investment also includes a large tubular mill at Unanderra, New South West, to produce solar torque tubes and increase warehouse capacity, positioning our business as a key supplier of products for the rapidly expanding renewable energy sector,” said Tony Schreiber, chair of the Australian Steel Institute and general manager of Orrcon Steel.
Components made by Orrcon Steel will be used on distributed generation and utility-scale solar farms. The first project scheduled to receive delivery from the facility is Spanish developer Acciona Energia’s 480MWp Aldoga solar PV plant to be built near Gladstone. PV Tech reported that the Aldoga PV plant has a 15-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with Queensland’s energy company Stanwell Corporation.