New South Wales renewables tender gets overwhelming response

The first round of tenders aimed at making the Aussie state of New South Wales coal-free has attracted an outstanding level of interest, the state government announced on Monday.

The competitive tender has lured bids for more than 5.5 GW of wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) generation capacity and over 2.5 GW of long-duration energy storage projects. The procurement round kicked off in October as part of the state’s efforts to modernise its electricity infrastructure system ahead of the planned closure of four out of five coal-fired power plants.

“This is an overwhelming response from the market [..],” said state energy Minister Matt Kean.

The proposals will be reviewed by NSW Consumer Trustee and the Australian Energy Market Operator, with winners to be awarded long-term energy service agreements. According to the government’s estimates, the offered projects in the tender will provide capacity that will be capable of supplying some 2.4 million homes with electricity.

In October, New South Wales launched a renewable energy and storage policy that is tied to the creation of five massive Renewable Energy Zones across the state. The state then set an objective to build 12 GW of renewable energy capacity and 2 GW of long-duration storage like pumped hydro by 2030 and unveiled plans to facilitate the process by holding bi-annual tenders over a period of 10 years.

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