New wind and solar farms begin production in NSW

Following on the coat-tails of the much bigger but long-delayed Sunraysia solar farm, the 39MW Molong solar farm in the New South Wales region of the same name has started registering “small blips” of generation on the National Electricity Market after being connected to the grid.

In a LinkedIn post on Wednesday, network operator TransGrid congratulated project owner AMP Energy on the registration of Molong Solar Farm, effective November 10, 2020.

And its arrival on the grid was confirmed by Watt Clarity’s Paul McArdle, who charted Molong’s first “small blips” on the Australian Energy Market Operator’s production system in the graph below. (Look hard, it’s in orange to the bottom right).

“The solar farm has an installed capacity of 30MW and connects to the network at the 66kV bus of TransGrid’s Molong Substation,” Transgrid said. “Once completed, Molong Solar Farm will produce enough solar energy to displace carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to 10,500 cars a year.”

Also joining Sunraysia and Molong on the NSW grid was Ratch Australia’s 227MW Collector wind farm, in the state’s Southern Tablelands.

The wind farm, which has PPAs with supermarket chain Aldi and with infigen Energy, is connected to the TransGrid network between Marulan Substation and Yass Substation, around 55km north of Canberra.

“Collector Wind Farm is expected to generate around 530GWh of safe, clean, reliable electricity a year, enough to power more than 70,000 Australian homes, making it one of the biggest wind farms in NSW to date,” TransGrid said in another LinkedIn post welcoming the project to the grid.

To follow will be the Wellington solar farm, a 200MW project that has been built in the NSW Great Western Plains region, the output of which will go to Snowy Hydro under a 15-year contract.