Goulburn River Solar Farm Project Progress

A huge proposed solar and battery storage project in New South Wales’ Upper Hunter Region has taken another small step forward.

Lightsource bp’s proposed Goulburn River Solar Farm project is made up of a 520MWdc solar farm and (at this point) a 296 MW/588 MWh  battery energy storage system (BESS) at a site between Wollar and Merriwa. Merriwa is approximately 270 kilometres northwest of Sydney and around halfway between Newcastle and Dubbo.

The ~950,000 bifacial solar panels¹ used for the facility are expected to generate 992,000MWh of solar electricity annually, and at peak output could supply approximately 4% of NSW electricity demand says Lightsource.

The proposed overall development footprint is 1,249 hectares of a total 2000 hectares of freehold land zoned as RU1 Primary Production. The land has been previously extensively cleared and is currently utilised for grazing activities – and these activities may continue once the facility is operational. This sort of arrangement is known as “agrivoltaics” or ” agrophotovoltaics”, the simultaneous use of land for both solar energy generation and agriculture.

Goulburn River Solar Farm will connect to the grid via an existing 500 kilovolt (kV) transmission line that runs through the south-eastern corner of the project area.

During its construction phase, Lightsource expects  up to 500 full-time equivalent jobs will be created.

Goulburn River Solar Farm Next Steps

It’s still early stages for this project and given the site is surrounded by Goulburn River National Park, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) comes into play; triggered when a project has the potential to have significant environmental impacts.

A referral under the EPBC was released on Tuesday to enable the public and various stakeholders to comment.

Lightsource has already carried out various consultations; among them a pre-scoping meeting with the NSW Dept of Planning, Industry and Environment (DPIE’s) Energy Assessments team. Briefings have also held for NSW National Parks and Wildlife Services, the Commonwealth Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment (DAWE) and Upper Hunter Shire Council.

Two online community information sessions were held in October last year. Here’s the presentation, which was followed by a Q&A session (the BESS capacity appears to have increased since this was held):

As well as ongoing consultation with various bodies as Lightsource prepares an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), further community consultation will also be undertaken – this time intended to be in-person – through community sessions proposed to be held in March and April this year.

It’s expected the EIS will be lodged around the middle of this year and in parallel with its development, a Social Impact Assessment will also be prepared.

Globally, Lightsource bp has 3.8GW of solar power capacity developed to date, with 20GW+ in its global project development pipeline. The company’s solar energy projects here in Australia include:

• Wellington – 200MWdc (NSW)
• Wellington North – 400MWdc (NSW)
• West Wyalong – 107MWdc (NSW)
• Woolooga – 210MWdc (QLD)
• Sandy Creek- 840MWdc (NSW)

You can find out more about Goulburn River Solar Farm here.