Wooderson Solar Development Co has submitted a 450MW solar-plus-storage project in Queensland to Australia’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.
The Wooderson Solar Farm, positioned approximately 40km southwest of Gladstone and 20km west of Calliope within the Gladstone Regional Council area, emerges from a joint venture structure between established renewable energy developers RES Australia and Energy Estate through their Central Queensland Power Development Co partnership.
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The development features a project area of 5,618 hectares distributed across 14 individual land parcels and local road corridors, with the actual infrastructure footprint concentrated within a disturbance area of approximately 1,849 hectares.
The battery energy storage component could provide up to 3,600MWh of storage capacity in a DC-coupled configuration. DC-coupled solar-plus-storage projects are becoming increasingly common in Australia due to several advantages over traditional AC-coupled systems, including improved efficiency, reduced equipment costs, and enhanced flexibility in energy dispatch.
Solar PV modules will be deployed on both fixed racks and single-axis tracking systems, enabling optimised energy capture across daily and seasonal variations in solar irradiance.
Power conversion systems integrate inverters and transformers within collector boxes distributed across the solar array, while the battery energy storage system incorporates containerized units with DC-DC converters and auxiliary transformers designed for utility-scale grid integration.
Construction activities are scheduled to commence in the first quarter of 2028 following a pre-construction phase encompassing geotechnical investigations, cultural heritage surveys and ecological pre-clearance assessments.
Construction will take roughly 37 months, with operations expected to begin in the first quarter of 2031, following commissioning and reliability testing. Once complete, the project will have an operational lifespan of 35 years.
The Wooderson submission joins an expanding pipeline of large-scale solar and storage projects undergoing federal environmental assessment across Australia.
FRV recently submitted its 200MW solar-plus-storage development to the EPBC Act. Similarly, BNRG Leeson advanced its 440MWdc solar-plus-storage project in Victoria, indicating cross-state momentum in utility-scale renewable energy development.
Perhaps one of the most significant projects added to the EPBC Act in recent months is Sun Cable’s submission for its 20GW Muckaty Solar Precinct, an integral part of an interconnector that could supply energy to Singapore.
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