Big solar boom continues, as half-year tally draws equal with HY 2018

Australia’s large-scale solar market is shaping up to have every bit as big a year as it did in the record-smashing 2018, according to the latest data from solar consultants SunWiz.

As illustrated in the chart below, total installations for the year so far put 2019 on par with this time last year, bringing it up to speed with a rate of growth that delivered a total of 28 solar farms and added 1442MW of new capacity.

As we reported last month, 2019 has been impressive enough already, with installs to June eclipsing totals for every other full year, except for 2018.

Another month on, and a total of just under 800MW of new large-scale solar capacity has been added to Australia’s grid.

As SunWiz’s Warwick Johnston noted last month, the 2019 tally has been boosted by the recent commissioning of a number of major solar farms, including Neoen Australia’s 100MW Numurkah project in Victoria, which began sending power to the grid in early May.

And in Queensland, as Giles Parkinson reported here, two new solar farms joined the grid, including Adani Renewables 65MW Rugby Run project, and the 100MW first stage of Pacific Hydro’s Haughton solar farm, south of Townsville.

Most recently, the 89MW Clermont Solar Farm located near the town of the same name, north of Emerald in Queensland, began sending power to the grid just last month, as we reported here.