FRV’s Goonumbla solar farm powers up in New South Wales

The 67.8MW Goonumbla solar farm, developed by international renewable energy company FRV near Parkes in New South Wales, has begun sending power to the grid.

According to Global Roam’s Paul McArdle, the providers of RenewEconomy’s NEM-Watch widget, said the solar farm had sent short bursts of around 1MW of power to the NEM on Tuesday and Wednesday (see chart below).

Goonumbla is one of eight wind and solar projects that formed part of the landmark deal for cheap and “firmed” renewables for government-owned retailer Snowy Hydro.

The 15-year power purchase deal will provide a total of 888MW of capacity to Snowy Hydro, which it turn aims to deliver – with the help of its existing hydro plants – “firm” renewables at a cost of well below $70/MWh.

FRV, now part of the Saudi-based corporation Abdul Latif Jameel,  said last year that it expected the Goonumbla solar farm to have capacity factor of around 33 per cent.

It is FRV’s sixth solar project in Australia, taking total investment to around $1 billion since the first utility-scale solar farm in the nation’s main grid, the 20MW Royalla facility near Canberra, began in 2012.

Other projects include Clare (100 MWac) and Lilyvale (100MW ac) in Queensland, Moree (56 MW AC) and Winton (85 MW ac) in Victoria.

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