Updated 19 February 2018
The 10MW Gullen Solar Farm, 30 minutes past Goulburn, has switched on and is now supplying solar power to the grid.
The Solar Farm was built by the Gullen Wind Farm owners, a Chinese consortium. It includes over 30,000 Yingli solar panels. More info is available here, including details of a free site tour on Tuesday the 24th of October.
It is Australia’s first co-located solar and wind farm, which will utilise the same transformers, electrical transmission and road infrastructure, gaining cost efficiencies when compared to stand along wind and solar farms. Wind and solar farms do not necessarily generate at the same time, providing more steady output also. The site may grow to 1,000MW of solar in the future.
Other operating NSW large scale solar farms include:
- 102 MW Nyngan
- 53 MW Broken Hill
- 56 MW Moree
- (Total 221MW)
Other solar farms under construction in NSW include (new additions and progress updates in February update in italics):
- 51 MW Parkes (Construction 93% complete)
- 49 MW Manildra
- 24 MW Dubbo (Construction 91% complete)
- 25 MW Griffith (Construction 86% complete)
- 20 MW White Rock (near Glenn Inness)
- 250MW Sunraysia
- 150 MW Colleamby
- (Total 569 MW)
You can see during the middle of the day today, solar provides a large amount (11%) of NSW electricity generation, but rooftop solar (710 MW) still greatly exceeds large scale solar (209 MW).
You can see the data here: http://reneweconomy.com.au/nem-watch/
Still, NSW is a laggard compared to other states, with only 3% solar supply across the year. There is so much unrealised potential still. Particularly with Liddell closing in 2022, and NSW importing 10% of its annual electricity from Queensland and Victoria. We need much more solar in the coming years as soon as possible, both rooftop and large scale.
This will change in coming months as the 5 new solar farms come online and incoming years as more large scale solar is built.
Here is a map of solar farms operating or at various stages of development in NSW:
