Developer Elgin Energy’s 330MW Barwon Solar Farm has become the latest project to be fast-tracked by the Victoria government in Australia.
The solar-plus-storage site, which was successful in the first Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS) tender last year, will be located in the Little River region of Victoria, 44km southwest of Melbourne’s Central Business District.
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Elgin said the development’s location has an abundance of solar resources, making it ideal for a solar PV power plant. The 735-hectare site also has direct proximity to grid capacity that can support a large project, with 500kV and 220kV transmission lines passing through it, enabling the project to connect to the National Electricity Market (NEM).
Around 540,690 ground-mounted solar PV modules will be installed using single-axis tracking technology. Once mounted on the frames and fully tilted, the modules will be capable of reaching an overall height of no more than 3.2 metres above ground level.
A co-located 250MW/500MWh battery energy storage system (BESS) has also been fast-tracked as part of the application. The BESS will include approximately 136 inverters built on concrete foundations.
Elgin initially hoped the project would be operational in 2025; however, it noted this was subject to planning approval.
Victoria’s Development Facilitation Program
The Barwon PV plant has been fast-tracked through the Victoria government’s Development Facilitation Program pathway after the minister for planning, Sonya Kilkenny, gave the green light.
This initiative, which was expanded last year to include renewable energy projects, aims to speed up the development of critical infrastructure projects in Victoria.
Before its inclusion, projects had to pass through the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, which saw around 20% of these projects delayed by around two years.
Instead, a decision on the planning application is expected to take around four months. Recently, projects such as Birdwood Energy’s 1.8GWh Wodonga BESS and US independent power producer (IPP) BrightNight’s 360MW Mortlake solar-plus-storage project have all been selected for the scheme.
The Victorian government said that 10 renewable energy projects have now been fast-tracked through the Development Facilitation Program, totalling over AU$1 billion (US$630 million) in investment.
Victoria’s minister for energy, Lily D’Ambrosio, highlighted the need to increase renewable energy generation deployment to support the state in achieving its 95% renewable energy by 2035 target. The fast-track process is one way the government hopes to achieve this.
