Engie cancels solar and battery hybrid project following community objections

Engie has cancelled a proposed solar farm on the outskirts of Yass after concerted efforts by a community group to stop the project, and is now looking at installing a standalone battery on the site instead.

The proposal was for a solar battery hybrid plant, comprising of 100 megawatt (MW) solar farm and a 250MW / 500 MWh battery storage system (BESS), to be located on the downward slopes south-west of Yass, and next to the town’s existing substation.

It’s a valuable location on the main transmission line between Sydney and the rest of southern NSW.

But fears about the visual impact of 220,000 solar panels on the valley — with no vegetation able to block those — led a group of residents to form the Yass Solar Action Group who ultimately succeeded in stopping the proposal. 

The early stage review of the project looked at those physical challenges and the community’s concerns and ultimately led Engie to dump the solar part of the proposal, a spokesperson told Renew Economy.

“We understand the importance of genuine community engagement and input and have listened closely to feedback from residents in Yass, while also undertaking a number of studies to help us determine feasibility of the project,” the spokesperson says.

“While the solar farm project will not move forward, Engie is now considering building a battery in the area, given its strategic grid location. A battery would be much smaller, potentially taking up just 10-20 hectares of land, rather than the roughly 350 hectares the solar farm could’ve required.”

The French-owned developer promises that any new project will seek out community views before finalising a scoping report, the first document in the planning process that sets out the overarching vision.

The project would have taken in 340 hectares of land, with the development itself taking up 186 hectares.

The project would have been a hybrid DC-connected system, meaning the battery would have been connected directly to the solar farm to absorb excess electricity during the middle of the day to roll out during peak periods. 

This also allows the solar farm to send power to the grid well into the evening peaks, as the country’s biggest solar hybrid at Cunderdin in Western Australia, is already doing. See: From breakfast to bedtime: How first big solar battery is cashing in on evening demand peaks

This wasn’t the first solar project proposed for this site: in 2020 Tetris Energy sent the concept into the NSW planning process after securing the land.

It was looking at a dramatically smaller 80MW of solar and a 20MW BESS, of uncertain duration.

The smaller footprint put forward in 2020 by a previous developer named Tetris Energy.

Bill relief was on the table

Engie is one of a vanguard of renewable energy developers that are offering bill-based benefits sharing schemes, offering residents near its The Plains wind farm an annual $1000 off power bills in 2024.

A year earlier and 450km to the east, the Yass Valley council had already stipulated bill relief as something it wanted  in order to approve the project. 

The council required Engie to set up a Community Enhancement Fund of either 1 per cent of the total cost of the project, to be paid up front before construction started ,or annually for the life of the project.

Engie said in its 2023 scoping report that local energy discounts for Yass residents were also on the table. 

A battery would still yield energy bill rebates but for a smaller number of neighbours.

Feeding future planning

Engie’s work, both at a community level and on the basics of planning, is valuable information that, currently, will be lost as a resource for New South Wales’ (NSW) planners, says consultant Stephanie Bashir. 

“The Yass solar outcome is a good example of why developers need to get involved in where projects are, where we design renewable energy zones (REZs), and locations for good projects,” she told Renew Economy.

Bashir wants to see channels created where developers’ work around putting projects together can feed into state and national planning of the energy transition. 

“At the moment, it’s not cohesive. There’s the ISP from AEMO [Australian Energy Market Operator] and states are developing renewable energy zones, but it needs to go a step further and take on a market-led approach that also factors in information from current commercial proposals,” she says.

“They do the first litmus test around building community support. Had we been factoring in this data five years ago, we may have been able to avoid the community opposition to transmission projects like VNI West and Project Connect.” 

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