Big coal to big solar: NSW leads nation on new large-scale PV capacity

New South Wales hosted the majority of new large-scale solar projects completed and commissioned in Australia in 2022, and is now home to four of the five biggest solar farms in the country, a new report has found.

The Clean Energy Council’s latest report card on Australia’s renewable energy progress paints a picture of a state that has gone big on solar as it scrambles to replace its ageing coal fleet, including the Liddell Power Station, the closure of which kicks off this week.

The Clean Energy Australia 2023 report, published on Tuesday, locates eight of the 12 large-scale solar projects commissioned in 2022 in NSW, including the 150MW Sun Top solar farm in the state’s central west that in 2020 secured an off-take deal with online retail giant Amazon.

As the charts below show, outside of NSW, the other four large-scale solar projects commissioned in 2022 included just one each in Queensland, Western Australia, Victoria, and the Northern Territory.

But NSW dominated the new big solar additions by far.

On top of this, the CEC report shows that NSW is host to four out of five of the nation’s biggest solar farms, to date, leading with the 275MW Darlington Point solar farm near Griffith in the south west of the state.

Darlington Point is itself a neat illustration of NSW’s solar-coal balance, with the Edify Energy project in 2018 securing a long term contract to sell most of its output to Delta Electricity – at that time the owner of the Vales Point coal plant.

See also: Coal feels the squeeze as big solar shines in New South Wales

But beyond its prowess in solar – NSW also led Australia on new rooftop solar capacity added in 2022, with a total 829MW installed over the year – the state finished the year notably behind on large-scale wind and big batteries.

Of all the NEM states, NSW has the second-lowest renewable energy penetration at just over 30%.

NSW gets no mention in the tally of new large-scale wind projects completed in 2022, but does have a respectable five projects in the list of wind farms under construction or committed at the end of the year.

This includes the massive 396MW Rye Park wind farm being built by Tilt Renewables in the NSW Southern Tablelands.

Rye Park will be the largest operating wind farm in NSW when fully commissioned in 2024, and one of the five biggest in the country, expected to produce an average of 1,188GWh of renewable electricity a year.

On big batteries, NSW is also playing catch-up, but efforts are being boosted a competitive tender for 380MW of “firming infrastructure being sought as part of the planned replacement of the Eraring coal plant, along with a series of tenders for new wind, solar and long duration storage, and the planned Waratah “super battery.”