Queensland’s Longreach Solar Farm Inaugurated

Canadian Solar’s $29 million Longreach Solar Farm project had its official inauguration yesterday. The 15MW AC (17.472 MWp DC) clean power station is being progressively commissioned and is currently operating at 50% capacity.

The facility is located near Longreach in Central West Queensland, which is approximately 700 km west of Rockhampton.

Consisting of 54,600 x 320 watt Canadian Solar panels, the project also utilises a single-axis tracking system. Canadian Solar expects output from the facility during its first year to be approximately 39.1 gigawatt-hours of electricity.

Longreach Solar Farm is a beneficiary of the Queensland Government’s Solar150 program, which providing long-term revenue certainty by providing projects with a 20-year revenue guarantee. This also assists developers in accessing favourable financing arrangements, resulting in lower-cost projects.

Other projects under the Solar150 program are Darling Downs, Whitsunday, Kidston, Oakey and Collinsville solar farms.

Longreach Solar Farm was also a beneficiary of funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), which kicked in $1.3 million.

Member for Bancroft Chris Whiting, representing Energy Minister Dr Anthony Lynham at the inauguration event, said this project will be followed by the initial 25-megawatt stage of Canadian Solar’s 80-megawatt Oakey Solar Farm, due to be operational and grid connected by September this year.

There’s been a flurry of large scale solar news from Queensland over the last week.

Last Thursday, the Queensland Government announced the 130 megawatt (MW) Clare Solar Farm near Ayr, the largest operating PV facility in the state, had started supplying electricity to the grid and represented another significant step towards the state’s 50% renewables by 2030 goal.

“We have 890MW of renewables flowing into the grid already, much of it from Queenslanders who have embraced rooftop solar panels,” said Dr  Lynham¹.

Also announced last week was Powerlink and Pacific Hydro finalising a connection agreement for the first stage of Haughton Solar Farm. Initially to be 100MWac capacity, Pacific Hydro has planning approval to build out to 500MWac.

Clean Energy Council Chief Executive Kane Thornton said last week 20 large-scale solar projects were either under construction, would soon commence or had already been completed in the state this year and that investments in Queensland large-scale solar currently make up more than half of total investment value across Australia.

As well as committed projects, there’s some very large solar PV facilities in the pipeline for the state, including a 1,500 megawatt solar farm proposed for east of Harlin in south-east Queensland.