Enel Green Power Australia, a joint venture co-owned by Enel Green Power and INPEX Renewable Energy Australia, has acquired a 1GW solar-plus-storage project in the Central-West Orana Renewable Energy Zone (REZ) in New South Wales from RES Group.
The Tallawang hybrid project comprises a 500MWac solar farm and a 500MW/1000 MWh battery energy storage system (BESS). It is situated 8km northwest of Gulgong in the Mid-West Regional Council area and will have an operational lifespan of 35-years.
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Matt Rebbeck, CEO of RES in Australia, said the Tallawang project represents a “significant step towards a zero-carbon future but also brings economic and social benefits to the local community”.
Planning documents revealed that the project will be located on a 1,300-hectare site and comprise 1,136,400 bi-facial solar modules arranged in rows, likely to be a maximum of five metres high and 10 metres apart. The distance between these rows will allow for ongoing land use for grazing or existing agricultural activities.
Panels will consist of heterojunction or crystalline silicon-based PV cells sandwiched between two thin transparent layers of vapour-proof encapsulation material.
One onsite 330kW substation and switchyard is also proposed for the project.
The acquisition’s completion is subject to typical conditions for transactions of this nature, including Foreign Investment Review Board Approval.
According to Werther Esposito, CEO of Enel Green Power Australia, the project has outstanding resources” with its key planning and regulatory approvals “well progressed”.
It is worth noting that the project will have access to key transmission infrastructure because it is located in the Central-West Orana REZ, which aims to deliver 4.5GW of transmitted electricity and bolster renewable energy generation in New South Wales.
PV Tech previously reported that the New South Wales government is developing at least five separate multi-gigawatt REZ facilities connected to the grid and partially using long-duration energy storage to replace traditional centralised power plants. The five REZ include the Hunter-Central Coast, the South-West, New England, Central-West Orana, and Illawarra.
Elsewhere in the Central-West Orana REZ, Akaysha Energy closed AU$650 million (US$440.58 million) in financing from 11 banks for a BESS planned to be in excess of 1,660MWh capacity earlier this week (15 July), as reported by our sister site Energy-Storage.news.
The banks are a mix of Australian and overseas lenders, including Australia’s ANZ, CBA and Westpac, and BNP, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, DBS, ING, Mizhuo, Rabobank, Siemens Financial Services via Siemens Bank and SMBC from abroad.
You can find out more about Australia’s REZ projects here.
PV Tech and its sister website, Energy-Storage.news, have published a special report in association with Huawei, exploring the some of the state-of-the-art battery energy storage system (BESS) technologies and the many applications they are being used for. To download the Huawei Energy Storage Special Edition in full, click here.
