Broken Hill Solar Plant reaches half-way mark

The second of Australia’s two largest utility-scale solar plants – AGL Energy’s 53MW Broken Hill Solar Plant – is on track to be fully operational by the end of the year, with half of its 650,000 solar PV modules successfully installed on location in NSW.

AGL said on Tuesday that constriction of the plant had reached the half-way mark, with first generation expected to be achieved in the next few months.

“The plant is really starting to take shape with half of the solar plant modules installed and connected,” said project manager Adam Mackett.

Once complete, the $150 million plant is expected to generate enough electricity to power 17,000 homes a year.

The Broken Hill project is one of two big solar projects being developed by AGL in NSW, the first being the completed and almost fully operational 102MW solar plant in Nyngan in the state’s west.

Construction of that plant – which will also claim the title, briefly, of the biggest example in the Southern Hemisphere – was completed in April, and is said to be one month away from being fully operational.

Once switched on, the grid-connected Nyngan plant effectively doubled Australia’s big solar output.

The two plants, worth a combined $440 million, received $166.7 million in funding support from ARENA and $64.9 million from the NSW government.