India solar contracting giant enters Australia market, starts on Wellington project

Sterling and Wilson describes itself as the world’ s largest solar EPC solutions provider, according to data from IHS Markit, with most of its operations in India, the Middle East and Africa, and says it sees huge potential in Australia, where it has bought the local operations of GCo Solar.

The company said it had begun construction of the 200MW Wellington solar farm on behalf of Lightsource BP, and expects the project to be complete by December, 2020.

CEO Bikesh Ogra said Australia is one of the most promising markets for solar.

“This will be one of the larger and significant projects being built in Australia,” he said in a statement. “We will leverage from our recent acquisition of GCo Solar in Australia which has executed Solar projects for major developers.”

Many EPC contractors in Australia have run foul of tight new connection standards and commissioning issues, with many projects suffering major delays – some of them 12 months or more – even after mechanical construction has been complete.

One major contractor, RCR, has gone into liquidation, while many others have suffered write downs or been hit with claims for “liquidated damages” from project developers trying to make up lost revenue.

“We are confident, as a global solar EPC company with experience across geographies, we can bring our best practices to this market,” Ogra said.

Sterling and Wilson Solar says it has built a portfolio of 8GW of solar power projects across various geographies. “With the global solar market poised to grow substantially in the years to come, Sterling and Wilson Solar Limited has positioned itself well to be at the forefront of this tremendous opportunity,” its statement said.

The 200MW DC solar project (176MW AC) will be built near Wellington, in NSW, and most of the output will go to Snowy Hydro under a 15-year contract that was secured as part of the major wind and solar tender that Snowy concluded late last year for what it said then were groundbreaking low prices.

LightSource BP recently secured a senior debt facility with ING and EDC (Export Development Canada). One notable aspect of the project is that it is the first time that bifacial solar panels – in this case from Canadian Solar – will be installed at this scale in Australia.