New solar-battery hybrid promising four hours of storage near Canberra seeks federal green light

The local renewable energy arm of South Korean electronics giant Samsung is seeking a green light from the federal government for a new solar-battery hybrid project in southern New South Wales that would offer up to four hours of energy storage.

Plans for the Boro Solar Farm this week joined the queue for environmental assessment under the federal EPBC Act, seeking to install up to 150 megawatt (MW) of solar and a 250 MW, 1,000 megawatt-hour (MWh) battery energy storage system about an hour east of Canberra.

The site for the proposed project is roughly 40 km south of Goulburn and 200 km south-west of Sydney, in the local government areas of Goulburn Mulwaree Council and Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council in the South East and Tablelands Region of NSW.

Developer Samsung C&T Renewable Energy Australia says the proposed project area covers around 420 hectares of land that has been extensively cleared and used for farming and agriculture practices, and notes a history of mining activity for gold, silver, copper, lead and zinc in the region.

“The solar Farm would involve the construction, operation and decommissioning of a solar farm and battery energy storage system (BESS) with a generating capacity of 400 megawatts (up to 150 megawatt solar farm and a 250 megawatts/ 1000 megawatt hours storage BESS),” the proposal says.

“The solar farm would be inter-connected via a series of underground cables connecting the photovoltaic (PV) arrays to a central substation, which would then transform the electricity to 330 kilovolts for dispatch to an existing TransGrid 330kV overhead transmission line located to the south of the project.”

Goulburn and the surrounding regions have a chequered history with renewable energy development. While Goulburn hosts Australia’s first community solar and battery project, which officially launched in March of this year, it has also given vent to a lot of community opposition solar and wind on both sides of the border.

In 2022, local landowners banded together to fight development of a 400MW solar farm and big battery near Goulburn even before the community consultation process had begun, claiming it was unsuitable for the “agricultural nature of Gundary Plains.”

The Lightsource bp-originated Gundary solar farm, was beset by complaints from a vocal opposition group called Stop Gundary Solar Farm, which was supported by the leader of the federal opposition, Angus Taylor, a local landowner, and Goulburn MP Wendy Tuckerman.

More recently, the Merino solar farm and battery, a 450 MW / 1,800 MWh project being proposed by EDP Renewables Australia for in Tirannaville, south of Goulburn, has stirred similar levels of opposition, and was voted against by the Goulburn Mulwarre Council.

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