Australia’s top 10 best performing solar farms in 2022 include some originals

The list of the top 10 best performing large scale solar farms in Australia includes a few surprises, including the high ranking of some of the very first utility scale PV assets in the country.

The list of the top 10, put together by analysts at Rystad Energy, is topped by the 100MW Merredin Solar farm in Western Australia, with a capacity factor of 30 per cent of its AC-rated capacity.

Second is the Rugby Run solar farm in Queensland – a state that features five of the top 10. Rugby Run (28.5 per cent) is owned by Indian-based Adani, a company more prominent for its controversial coal mining operations.

Third place is taken by the first stage of the Greenough River solar farm near Geraldton in Western Australia, a 10MW facility that was the very first large scale solar facility in the country.

Now owned by Cbus Super, DIF Capital and Synergy, it posted a capacity factor of 28 per cent. It has since had a 20MW second stage added to it, although the first stage continues to perform best.

Another to feature in the top ten is the Moree solar farm in NSW, which comes in at number 8, and which was the first to feature single axis tracking technology, which became the technology adopted by nearly every solar facility that followed.

After Queensland (Rugby Run, Kidston, Haughton, Middlemount, Ross River), both Western Australia (Merredin and Greenough River) and NSW (Moree and Griffith) had two representatives in the top 10, while South Australia (Bungala 2) had one. Victoria is the only state not to have a solar farm ranked in the top 10.

See also: Small Victorian project tops performance rankings of Australian wind farms in 2022