No business case for large scale solar PV without long term storage, says AGL

AGL’s newly released plan for nearly three gigawatts of new renewable energy and storage projects is notable for its lack of any large scale solar plans.

It included several big batteries, some pumped hydro storage, and four huge wind farms – two of them identified and two that will, at least for the moment, remain a mystery.

But why no large scale solar plants? The answer, according to AGL, is that the country’s 15GW of rooftop solar is largely eating its lunch.

“To get a business case around solar is very difficult, because when you look to build it on a on a large scale, you are bringing in additional energy where already we have a surplus of energy,” Markus Brokhof, the chief operating officer of AGL, told RenewEconomy in an interview.

“If you don’t combine this with long term storage, then you know there is no business case.”

AGL is snubbing large scale solar plants, but it is still interested in the combination of solar and thermal storage, and has an investment in the Australian company RayGen, which is rolling out a pilot project of the latest version of its solar storage technology.

One of these could be built at the site of the soon-to-be closed Liddell coal generator in NSW. As Sophie Vorrath reported last year, the project will include a 4MW concentrating solar PV project alongside a 3MW/50MWh ‘solar hydro’ facility providing 17-hours of dispatchable storage.