Developers quietly shed solar generation to focus on battery only projects

Some developers are dumping the renewable energy generation components of their projects in favour of battery only plans, with projects planning large solar farms the main ones affected.

A number of new planning approval applications in New South Wales (NSW) reveal this latest trend, including one from Terrain Solar, which is being bought by utility giant AGL, and which has quietly nixed a 100MW solar farm called Myrtle Creek, on the northern coast of NSW.

That project is now focused on a 100 MW, two hour BESS project. 

“Based on increasing solar farm developments and valuable feedback from the community and stakeholders, we’ve decided to focus solely on the BESS,” Terrain Solar said in report published in September.

“The updated project will now only include a BESS, reducing the land use to about 9 hectares. This change will significantly reduce potential environmental and visual impacts.”

The decision likely reflects the growing number of negative pricing intervals in the middle of the day, which would affect solar farm returns, and make it potentially difficult to land rewarding power purchase agreements with big customers.

This is despite the continuing fall of the cost of solar panels to record low levels. But with homes and businesses also putting in record numbers of PV panels on their rooftops, the competition for the midday energy dollar is now intense, and has already caused a major rethink on the way baseload generators, particularly coal, are used.

Thai company Banpu’s local subsidiary has also abandoned ship for the solar arm of its Pinecrest project, near Lithgow. 

The project was going to have a 100 MW solar farm, but will instead move ahead with only the 400 MW /800 MWh BESS.

Banpu Energy Australia bought the 100MWdc Beryl solar farm (pictured above), between Mudgee and Dubbo in central NSW, and the 55.9 MWdc Manildra solar farm to the south, in 2021.

The Pinecrest solar project would have been its first utility renewable energy generation project in Australia. As it is, the company has two small scale solar projects under 2MW, a plan to build a pumped hydro system in Lake Macquarie, and a coal mine waste gas concept for the Mandalong mine in NSW.

Spark Renewables has also quietly dropped its proposed 160MW Mates Gully solar farm and 100 MW, four hour BESS, near Wagga Wagga. That project was a lightning rod for opposition in the area and attracted significant pushback.

In October, Renew Economy reported that RES has abandoned plans to build a nearly 500 MW wind farm in central-western New South Wales, saying “changing economic and planning requirements” in the state have made it too challenging to proceed.