Queensland shortlists 10 in renewables-plus-storage tender

The Lilyvale solar plant in Queensland, Australia. Source: Abdul Latif Jameel

July 25 (Renewables Now) - Ten projects will compete for contracts with state-owned electricity generation and trading company CleanCo in a tender for up to 400 MW of renewables capacity with energy storage in Queensland, Australia.

The Renewables 400 reverse auction seeks to bring fresh wind, solar and battery storage capacity into the market. The government announced the 10 shortlisted projects on Wednesday, saying CleanCo will gather binding proposals from them and then recommend projects to the government early next year.

The following table contains a list of the shortlisted candidates and their proposals.

Developer	Project	Capacity (MW)
Acciona Australia	MacIntyre Wind Farm	540
Edify Energy	Majors Creek Solar Farm	200
First Solar Australia	Chinchilla Solar Farm	100
Goldwind Australia	Clarke Creek Wind Farm	800
Infigen Energy	Forsayth Integrated Facility (wind+storage)	65
Lyon Infrastructure Investment	Cape York Solar Storage	55
Neoen Australia	Kaban Green Power Hub	130
Pacific Hydro Australia Developments	Haughton Solar Farm	100
Vena Energy	Collinsville North Solar	100
Windlab	Lakeland Wind Farm	100

CleanCo will start trading in the national electricity market on October 31, 2019. The entity was set up in 2017 as part of the Powering Queensland’s Future plan. The state-owned generator will take over the 570-MW Wivenhoe pumped storage hydropower station, the 385-MW gas-fired Swanbank E power station and the Kareeya, Barron Gorge and Koombooloomba hydropower stations from the state’s other publicly-owned generators Stanwell and CS Energy. These will create CleanCo’s starting pack of generation assets, to which it will add renewables capacity with storage in order to increase competition and supply, putting downward pressure on power prices in the state.

According to the government’s estimates, CleanCo is expected to lower wholesale electricity prices by AUD 7 (USD 4.9/EUR 4.4) per MWh on average, bringing around AUD 70 per year in savings for the average Queensland household.

Queensland's goal is to reach a 50% renewables share by 2030.

(AUD 1.0 = USD 0.698/EUR 0.626)