Tailem Bend solar farm doubles in size with completion of stage two – battery to come

The second stage of what was one of South Australia’s first large-scale solar farms, Vena Energy’s Tailem Bend, has finally been completed, with the commissioning of an additional 87MW of solar – and a 41.5MW, one hour battery still to come.

EPC contractor UGL said on LinkedIn that the combined 610,000 panels of the two stages of Tailem Bend would now produce up to 180MW of power for the region, east of Adelaide.

“Tailem Bend has been a fantastic project to work on with our client Vena Energy,” said UGL’s Matt Stone on LinkedIn on Monday.

“The team has delivered a quality asset to the O&M team who will initially operate it and continue to deliver a high level of maintenance and performance,” Stone said.

According to a joint statement from Vena Energy and ElectraNet, the energisation of Tailem Bend 2 kicked off in February of this year, when it was marked as “an important milestone” ahead of the commissioning of the hybrid project.

However, it took until August for the first power to be injected into the grid, and until now for commissioning to be complete, highlighting the ongoing complications for many projects in getting to full production.

ElectraNet project manager Hasan Fayyaz said earlier this year the distribution company had undertaken augmentation works and modifications at the Tailem Bend and Coorong 1 substations, as part of efforts to connect the project to the grid.

“When completed, the Tailem Bend 2 Hybrid Project will have a combined capacity of 128.5 MW derived from the now energised 87 MW solar farm and the upcoming 41.5 MW Battery Energy Storage System,” Hasan said.

The 95MW Tailem Bend 1 solar farm – the second large scale PV project in South Australia – came into full operation in early 2019, after having to be pared down from its original 108MW capacity due to connection and system constraints.

It was then formally opened in May 2019 by owners Vena Energy and off-taker Snowy Hydro, which had secured a 22-year power purchase deal for Tailem Bend 1 through its retail subsidiary Lumo.

The Tailem Bend battery is expected to be fully operational later this year, when it will operate with the second stage solar farm as a hybrid project, presumably to help store solar at times of negative prices and avoid some of the forced economic shutdowns that have plagued stage one of the project.