Yatpool solar farm moves out of queue and onto grid in Victoria

The 106MW Yatpool solar farm – one of a number of Victorian renewable energy projects that has spent months in a queue waiting to connect to the grid – has started sending power to the National Electricity Market.

The BayWa RE project started registering small bouts of generation this week, as illustrated in the below chart from Global Roam’s Paul McArdle, joining fellow Victorian newcomer to the NEM, the Moorabool wind farm.

The solar farm in Victoria’s Sunraysia region is one of more than 20 major renewable energy projects that had been awaiting the all clear from the Australian Energy Market Operator to connect to the grid’s congested West Murray region, which straddles parts of Victoria and NSW.

After initial warnings at the start of 2020 of potentially years-long delays, AEMO advised in April that successful testing would allow it to progress new connection applications for some 23 projects. Yatpool was believed to number among five projects that were prioritised to somewhere near the top of that list.

BayWa’s neighbouring 112MW Karadoc solar farm was one of five PV projects, alongside Wemen, Bannerton and Gannawarra in Victoria, and Broken Hill in NSW – that had their output cut in half last September as a precautionary measure, and as their supplier sought to “re-tune” the inverters to overcome the risk of “severe oscillations” and voltage issues in the case of a network fault. Those curtailments were also lifted in April by AEMO.