Australia's first large-scale solar farm to be co-located with wind turbines will be built near Canberra, saving money and creating a more reliable, cheaper renewable energy model.
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The 10 MW solar photovoltaic plant near the existing Gullen Range Wind Farm, 28 kilometres north west of Goulburn, will likely be followed by more co-located generators, says the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, which is providing $9.9 million for the $26 million project.
ARENA chief executive Ivor Frischknecht said under the co-location model developers could save money on grid connection, approvals and site development costs including access tracks by co-locating wind and solar plants, while also reducing environmental impacts. Proponents expect savings of about $6 million.
Mr Frischknecht said solar and wind were complementary sources of renewable energy that produced power at different times of the day and year.
"Co-location provides more continuous energy generation, as wind farms tend to generate more energy overnight while solar only generates during the day. Gullen Wind Farm generates more power in winter and the new solar farm will generate more in summer," Mr Frischknecht said.
"It could also unlock new markets for medium-scale solar PV projects, because scale isn't as important for competitiveness when plants are co-located."
ARENA said a study found there was an estimated 1000 MW of potential opportunities to add solar PV alongside existing wind farms – enough to power 700,000 homes.
"We expect this to more than double by 2020 in line with Australia's renewable energy target," Mr Frischknecht said.
The Gullen solar farm is expected to generate 22,000 megawatt hours of electricity in the first year of operation, enough to supply about 3100 average NSW homes.
The solar farm will be built on gently sloping ground with a north aspect. Proponent Goldwind Australia had been using irradiance measurements on site since July, 2014. The solar array layout has been positioned to be sufficiently away from the turbines to avoid any shading from the turbines.
Goldwind, an Australian subsidiary of Chinese company Xinjiang Goldwind Science and Technology, has developed the project to date and will sell a portion of the business to partner Beijing Jingneng Clean Energy.
The project is expected to generate about 70 jobs at the peak of construction and should be finished in July, 2017.
Early stages of the Gullen Range Wind Farm triggered protests when 69 of the 73 turbines were located between two metres and 180 metres from their approved locations.
NSW's Planning Assessment Commission rejected a bid for retrospective approval of the turbines because of visual impacts on nearby residents. Goldwind launched action in the Land and Environment Court.
The issue was finally resolved when the Planning Assessment Commission found the turbine locations did not make a substantive difference to the visual impacts.
