Solar power investment planned for Australia

• 8 years ago (2015-09-14)
• David Flin

North America 1004 Renewables 757

---

Two of Australia’s renewable energy agencies are planning a large investment into solar power which could see the construction of up to ten large-scale power plants. The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) have announced a combined $350 million investment. Both organisations said that the new investment would drive down the cost of solar development and create more innovation in the sector.

ARENA has a $100 million grant programme that will seek bids from groups or organisations interested in building large-scale solar projects of more than 5 MW of generation capacity.

Ivor Frischknecht, Chief Executive of ARENA, said: “The goal is to reduce the cost of the supply chain. All of the local costs – the cables, brackets frames, posts and construction and financing costs – are very high because we have very few solar farms here. We have only four in Australia.”

ARENA hopes that by 2020, large-scale solar will be cost-competitive with renewable wind power. Frischknecht said that projects stemming from the grants should be completed by 2017, and will double the existing capacity of large-scale solar in Australia to about 400 MW.

The $100 million from ARENA will be complemented by $250 million from the CEFC. Ted Dow, Chief Investment Officer for CEFC, said the loans would help to secure cheaper capital than that available from other loan providers, like banks. He said: “The long-term benefit will be that we’ll drive down the costs of these technologies much faster than we would in the absence of any programme. We’ve got about a third of our power stations, coal-fired generating stations, which produce around 85 per cent of our electricity. About a third of them today are well past their useful service lives. In about 5-10 years, two-thirds will be well past their useful service lives, so there’s a complete overhaul coming of Australia’s power generation backbone. The cheapest way to replace that today will be to drive down the costs of solar, wind, and other renewable technologies.”