Chart of the Day: Australia’s best performing solar farms

Larges-scale solar plants have put in a solid performance for the first month of the Australian Spring, bumping up total national output by 20%, year-on-year, to 943GWh up from 784GWh in September 2021.

That’s according to the latest data from Rystad Energy lead renewables analyst David Dixon, in the latest monthly round-up of the best performing wind and solar assets around the country. (See the September wind Top 10 here.)

Sunshine State shines

Unlike the September wind energy rankings, which were dominated by generators in South Australia, the top performers in the utility-scale solar sector are a bit more spread out across the country, although Queensland definitely shines.

As Dixon’s chart shows, the best performing utility PV asset for the month is Palisade’s 116MWAC Ross River solar farm near Townsville in north Queensland, with a capacity factor of 28.7%.

This is followed by two more Sunshine State projects: Genex Power’s 50MM Kidston solar farm (28.6% AC CF) and Adani’s 65MW Rugby Run solar farm (28.6% AC CF) near the town of Moranbah.

Elsewhere in Australia…

Coming in at fourth place is FRV’s 56MW Moree Solar Farm in New South Wales, which according to the project site was one of the biggest PV projects in Australia at the time it was built all the way back in 2016 – and one of the first to use a single-axis tracking system to optimise generation.

The other two states represented in the Top 10 for September are Western Australia, with Risen Energy’s 132MW(dc) Merredin solar farm taking out sixth spot in the rankings; and South Australia, with the Bungala stage 2 solar farm (100MWac) coming in at number nine.