NSW opens up new tender for another gigawatt of wind and solar to replace coal

The NSW government is rolling out the fourth of its planned 20 or so tenders seeking new wind and solar generation and storage facilities to pave the way for the exit of coal and the switch to renewable dominated grid.

AEMO Services, which is handling the series of auction for the NSW government’s renewable infrastructure roadmap, advised on Thursday that registrations for the latest tender will open next week, with an explanatory webinar to be held in early November.

The new tender will be focused on new generation only, seeking about 3,000 gigawatt hours of wind and solar, or about one gigawatt of new capacity, depending on the mix of technologies.

But it will also be the first tender to feature access rights, which effectively reserve a place on the grid in the newly formed renewable energy zones, to ensure that they will not be hurt by grid bottlenecks.

The access rights, which involve a complex calculation and whose results will be fascinating to those in the industry, are available for up to 5.8 GW of capacity in the first REZ, the Central West Orana zone, stretching east from Dubbo, although they may not all be sold in the one tender.

The generation tender is being sandwiched in between a series of major storage tenders, one that will seek 930 MW of short duration “firming” capacity to plug gaps in the evening peaks, and others seeking long duration storage of at least eight hours to time shift wind and solar.

The first tender held by AEMO Services in NSW resulted in 1.3GW of new wind and solar capacity, some of it already under construction (at the New England solar farm), and a single 50MW, eight-hour battery at Limondale, in the south west of the state.

The second tender originally sought at least 380MW of two hour “firming capacity”, but that this was boosted to 930 MW with the help of funding from the federal government after the market operator identified a bigger gap from the planned August, 2025, closure of the massive Eraring coal generator.

The results of that tender are expected to be announced within the next two weeks, followed in December by the winners of Tender 3, which like the first tender sought around 1GW of new wind and solar and the remainder of the 600 MW of long duration storage not allocated.

Projects in Tender 4 can bid for only Long Term Energy Supply Agreements (LTESAs), which provide a minimum guaranteed price that helps secure finance from lender, or a combination of LTESA’s and access if located in the CWO Rez.

Registrations for the Tender Round 4 will open on October 31, when the key dates in the bidding process will be revealed, and a webinar will be held on November 8 at 2pm for those interested. A total of around 20 tenders are expected to be held out to 2030 to ensure at least 12GW of new generation and 2 GW of storage is built.