Australian renewable and storage developer Edify Energy has put yet another solar and storage proposal up for federal environmental assessment, the third to enter the EPBC queue in the last two months, and one of 12 renewable energy projects publicly under development.
The Brewongle solar farm proposes to develop a 90 megawatt (MW) PV generator and a 90 MW/180 MWh battery energy storage system in the middle of the Central West Orana renewable energy zone (REZ), near Bathurst in New South Wales (NSW).
The referral of the Brewongle project is part of a flurry of activity from the Sydney head-quartered Edify, amid reports it is bulking up in preparation to sell.
It follows the addition to the EPBC queue of the 100MW Burroway solar farm and 100MW/400MWh BESS, and the 96MW Peninsula solar farm and 80MW/160MWh BESS also in the Central West Orana REZ.
Edify also closed a deal with Rio Tinto in March to sell power from its Smoky Creek and Guthrie’s Gap solar farms to the Gladstone smelter and refineries.
With a pipeline worth $2.8 billion, the Australia-founded developer reportedly put itself up for sale in March, hiring Lazard Australia to look for buyers, according to the AFR.
Marketing documents highlighted the company’s 11.25GW under development pipeline and promised that 18 per cent of that will be ready for construction by the end of this year, with another 39 per cent following in 2026 and 43 per cent ready in 2027.
The company has six operational solar farms and two BESS sites.
In 2024, the developer sent into the EPBC process the Callide solar power station, Muskerry solar and Pleystowe BESS, all in Queensland .
Not much left of native flora, fauna
The Brewongle project will connect into Transgrid’s 132 kV Wallerawang to Panorama transmission line via an existing overhead line to the north of the project.
The site has been used for intensive agriculture and as such there isn’t much native flora or habitats for fauna left, the EPBC referral document says.
“The limited extent of this community does not meet minimum patch size or condition class thresholds to be commensurate with the EPBC Act listed community,” the referral says.
“Ecological surveys failed to record occurrences of MNES [matters of national environmental significance] listed threatened species or communities over three survey periods in three seasons, completed in May 2023, February 2024 and October-November 2024.
“Areas that support ‘habitat critical to the survival’ for MNES species have been identified for a single listed threatened species, Diamond Firetail, with only 0.48ha of woodland vegetation.
“Field surveys have also confirmed that no listed threatened ecological communities occur in the Study Area.”
Running with the sheep
Edify also plans to run sheep under the panels – merinos for preference, given that breed is what the landowner already runs on the property.
The scoping report was lodged in late 2023, just before agrisolar or solar grazing became a popular item to add into solar project applications. While the report doesn’t go into the kind of detail preferred by agrisolar experts, it is more detailed than most development applications that include agriculture as a one-liner.
A corner of the Brewongle site, near Bathurst in NSW. Image: Edify Energy
The NSW Department of Agriculture was not so sure however, asking for detailed plans for how Edify intends to support 1000 sheep across the 299 hectare site.
It asked for planning around infrastructure such as yards, fencing and water, and pasture and weed management – the latter being a key bugbear for neighbours of solar farms.
It also wanted granular detail on the animals themselves – from the ages and sex of the sheep being run on the site to an explanation of whether the animals will be bred for meat or wool.
