Elliott Green Power has formally opened its 95MW Susan River solar farm near Maryborough and Hervey Bay in Queensland, with another of the company’s solar farms near completion and a third to be finished later this year.
The opening of Susan River takes the total of large-scale renewable energy generation projects to come on-line in Queensland over the past two years to 20. Before then, the state could only boast of a small wind farm in the north, and a heap of rooftop solar.
Energy Minister Dr Anthony Lynham, who attended the opening, says there are another 13 large-scale projects under construction in Queensland totalling more than 1,200MW, attracting investment of $2.5 billion and creating more than 1,900 construction jobs.
Those projects include the 75MW Childers solar farm, located around 50km from Susan River. Elliott Green Power is also building the 132MW Nevertire solar farm near Warren in north-west NSW.
“Elliot Green Power’s $175 million investment is another demonstration of industry’s confidence in the sector and further evidence that consistent energy policy from this Palaszczuk government drives generation investment,” Lynham said in a statement.
“That’s in stark contrast to what the Morrison government’s policies are doing to investment in new generation.”
The Queensland government has a 50 per cent renewable energy target for 2030, a target that the Morrison government has described as “reckless” and economy destroying.
Elliott Green Power is wholly owned subsidiary of Elliott Management Corporation, a $US35 billion US hedge fund management company. Its Susan Rivers and Childers solar farms were the first two solar farms to sign up to a financial instrument known as a “proxy revenue swap” that protects it from variations in output.
The hedging product, offered by Nephila Holdings Ltd and Allianz Global’s alternative risk transfer unit was usually used by developers to de-risk wind farms.
