ARENA shortlists 22 solar projects in $100m funding round

22 large-scale solar projects have been shortlisted to progress to the next stage of a competitive round of solar photovoltaic (PV) funding by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).

ARENA CEO Ivor Frischknecht said the expression of interest (EOI) phase had attracted strong interest with 77 eligible candidates. The large-scale solar competitive round is designed to support the development of around 200 MW of large-scale solar capacity, bringing the nation’s total capacity to 440 MW, which can generate up to 860,000 MWh of electricity each year — enough to power 120,000 average Australian homes.

Submissions for the next application stage are due by 15 June 2016.

“The projects are located in all mainland states and have a total capacity of 766 MW. Each project was able to demonstrate its cost of energy was below the threshold of $135 per MWh, with some projecting costs significantly below this threshold level,” said Frischknecht.

“More than three times the amount of funding available through the ARENA competitive round has been requested for the 22 projects, with an ask of approximately $332 million for projects totalling $1.68 billion.

“The strong interest and high-quality applications demonstrate Australia is serious about deploying large-scale solar and capitalising on its abundant solar resources.”

Frischknecht believes it is clear that large-scale solar has the potential to become one of the most competitive forms of energy in the world.

“It is also clear that, despite our significant solar advantages, Australia has some work to do to catch up to countries with more mature large-scale solar industries — our grid-connected, large-scale solar capacity will shortly reach 240 MW and is generated by a only a handful of solar plants,” said Frischknecht.

“Through this competitive round, ARENA’s support will ensure a series of large-scale solar projects get off the ground and will help move large-scale solar costs in Australia further down the cost curve, potentially to less than $100 per MWh by 2020.”

ARENA plans to publish aggregated analysis of the EOIs in February to provide the sector with insight about cost and generation parameters.

View the project short list here.

Image credit: ©iStockphoto.com/Pedro Castellano

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