Image: plonk66
RCR Tomlinson Ltd announced yesterday it has been chosen as the preferred Engineering, Procurement and Construction contractor for two new large-scale solar farms in Australia.
Subject to financial close, the company will be providing EPC plus operations and maintenance (O&M) services associated with the Clermont Solar Farm (Stage 1) and Wemen Sun Farm.
Clermont Solar Farm, located a few kilometres south west of the town of Clermont in central Queensland, is a 150MWac project to be constructed in two 75MW phases. Using solar modules on single-axis trackers, the project is expected to boast one of Australia’s highest per-unit energy yields.
Construction of the facility will generate up to 200 jobs per phase and is expected to be completed next year.
The 88MWac Wemen Sun Farm will be located outside Wemen, Victoria, which is approximately 110 kilometres from Mildura. That facility is scheduled to be connected to the grid mid-2018.
The developer of both facilities is Wirsol Energy Ltd.
“The Australian market plays an exceedingly important role for our international growth strategy,” said the company back in September when it acquired the Wemen Sun Farm project. “In coming years, we will be making a significant contribution to the expansion of renewables and setting up important power production facilities with our solar parks.”
Wirsol has five solar farms in construction in Queensland and Victoria, with a total solar generation capacity of ~400MWp, all of which are scheduled to be connected to the grid by mid-2018. The company said it also had additional projects in its pipeline totaling approximately 670MWp.
Once Clermont Solar Farm and Wemen Sun Farm are commissioned, RCR will initially provide O&M services for two years, with options for up to a further 13 years.
“We are very pleased to continue our strong relationship with Wirsol to deliver these two large-scale solar energy projects,” said RCR Managing Director & CEO, Dr Paul Dalgleish. “We are now supporting Wirsol in the development of over 200MWac of renewable energy solar projects.”
Last week, RCR Tomlinson also announced it had been awarded a contract to commence work under a Limited Notice to Proceed (“LNTP ”) for the 100MWac Haughton Solar Farm, which is being developed by Pacific Hydro.
The site of Haughton Solar Farm is in central Queensland’s Burdekin Shire, 40km west of Ayr and 60km south of Townsville. Pacific Hydro has planning approval to build out to 500MWac capacity, which it says would be enough to supply the equivalent of 170,000 households.
RCR Tomlinson is also the EPC contractor for the Daydream and Hayman solar farms in Queensland.
About Michael Bloch
RSS - Posts
Hi Michael I have been reading about all the new solar farms being installed around Australia and they going ahead in leaps and bounds big companies outlaying huge money, tell me what is the big picture here, solar is free?small and large business and housing, more and more are putting solar panels up to cut there costs,so let’s say 20yrs from now when renewables energy will be accounting for most of the power we need,solar is going to be every where so a hell of a lot of people will get a lot of there power free.How do these big companies make a profit as time goes on and more business and houses get solar panels I know it has to be viable or they would not do it but again what the big picture here energy from the sun is free?
Hello Scott, Ronald here.
Solar farms are able to go ahead at the moment for two reasons. First they usually acquire Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) where their electricity is sold for a set amount for a set number of years. This reduces the risk for developers. But more importantly, Australia’s Renewable Energy Target enables them to generate a Large-scale Generation Certificate for each megawatt-hour of renewable electricity they provide to the grid. These are worth money and can be created until 2030. But Australia’s large scale Rewnewable Energy Target will be reached in 2020 and the Federal government has made it clear there will be no support for new large scale renewables after that point. The Coalition is clearly hoping for a hiatus in solar and wind farm construction and it looks like that is what may happen.