Stanwell Corp, the Queensland government owned coal power giant and the country’s second largest greenhouse gas emitter, is looking to the green energy future with new intensity after signing up for its first solar farm operations and maintenance (O&M) contract.
Stanwell set up an O&M arm at the end of 2023, dubbed SAMCo, and it has now signed a five year contract with Ratch Australia to look after its 42 megawatt (MW) Collinsville solar farm near Townsville in the state’s north.
Collinsville is Stanwell’s first solar contract but this comes after the wind contract that SAMCo kicked off with, namely the two-stage 500 MW Wambo wind farm currently being built in Queensland’s Western Downs
The company said in a LinkedIn post today that it has secured “several” wind contracts to date.
Shifting coal workers to renewable
The new division has a dual role: it shifts the state-owned coal company further into renewables while providing new job and training opportunities for its existing workforce.
The contract for the Collinsville solar farm sets up two permanent jobs at the site for Stanwell employees, a training ground for the company’s renewable energy work experience program, and subcontracting opportunities for businesses in the area.
As for what those employees will be doing, Stanwell says the O&M contract covers electricity operations, scheduled inspections, maintenance and repairs to all the panels, inverters and high voltage systems, routine cleaning of the panels, and grass and weed control.
“Partnering with renewable energy companies like Ratch-Australia is critical to building our renewable energy service capabilities and delivering on our strategy to provide future job pathways for our people,” says Stanwell CEO Michael O’Rourke.
“Stanwell has one of the most reliable and safest generation portfolios in the country and our highly skilled workforce is looking forward to using our proven systems and skills to support SAMCo in delivering world-class asset maintenance services to our partners and our own growing portfolio of renewable energy projects.”
Big polluter
Stanwell remains in second place on the Clean Energy Regulator’s most recent list of largest greenhouse gas emitters, logging 18.2 million tonnes of Scope 1 emissions in 2022-23.
The company has 3.3 gigawatts (GW) of coal fired power in its portfolio with the Stanwell and Tarong power stations, or about 40 per cent of the coal generation in Queensland. It fuels these with coal from the Meandu and Curragh mines, and has options to develop two other coal deposits nearby.
With Stanwell’s sites subject to the Safeguard Mechanism which requires baseline emissions to ratchet down by 5 per cent a year or pay a $75 a tonne carbon price, the company is on notice to improve those figures.
Solar, wind shift
Stanwell has been moving towards a renewable future over the last few years with forays into wind, solar and green hydrogen.
That future began in 2021, when then-CEO Richard Van Breda announced with no warning the company would transition away from coal. He resigned very soon afterwards. He was replaced by the then-CFO O’Rourke, who quietly continued that trend towards renewables by signing up to offtake agreements with a range of Queensland wind and solar projects.
Stanwell has a small solar offtake agreement with the 200 MW Bluegrass solar farm, but the company’s interest has mainly stayed with wind.
Aside from the Wambo wind farm, which also includes an offtake agreement for half of the project’s generation, it also has offtake agreements with the 1.026 GW MacIntyre wind farm, the 450 MW Clarke Creek wind farm, and the 330 MW Mount Hopeful wind farm with which it is also bidding for an O&M contract.
Stanwell is looking to invest in the proposed 500 MW Tarong West wind farm as well.
It’s building a 300 MW / 600 MWh battery on the Tarong coal power station site, a 300 MW / 1200 MWh battery on the Stanwell power plant site, and is working on a 5 MWh flow battery with Redflow.
It’s also working on green hydrogen ideas in the Central Queensland Renewable Hydrogen (CQ-H2) project, the Central Queensland Hydrogen Hub, and looking at a 10 MW demonstration plant at its Stanwell power station.
