Dive Brief:
-
Lyon Group plans to build a 30-MW solar plant paired with a 1.4-MW (5.3-MWh) lithium battery storage facility near Cooktown, Queensland, according to Renew Economy.
-
Upon completion, the Australian infrastructure investor plans to sell the project to Conergy of Germany.
-
Lyon Group says it has a pipeline of projects involving more than 300 MW of solar capacity and 60 MW of battery storage in South Australia over the next two years.
Dive Insight:
Abundant sunshine, high solar penetration and expiring feed-in-tariffs for solar power combine to make Australia a prime market for combining solar power and energy storage. A recent Morgan Stanley report said that Australian utilities are underestimating the disruptive potential of solar + storage applications.
Those conditions have attracted Australian infrastructure group Lyon, which is planning a series of solar + storage projects.
“The genie is out of the bottle,” Lyon Group’s David Green, told Renew Economy. “There will be a burst of activity now in large scale solar + battery projects. This is the real battery storage story coming out of Australia, batteries used to convert large scale solar to effectively baseload, or peaking plant.”
Green says he is initially looking at projects that focus on high energy use areas on the edge of the grid. Among the first project in Lyon’s pipeline is a 100-MW solar PV plant with 40 MW of battery storage cited near Roxby Downs, South Australia, and slated for service in 2018.
Lyon is also working on the Kingfisher project, 20-MW solar PV farm with at least 2 MW of battery storage that could be in service late next year.
