This table is based on 'small scale solar installations by postcode' as
published by the Renewable Energy Regulator in early March 2015 and 'ranked
list of states and territories of Australia' in Wikipedia (2015/04/30).
The wind power numbers were my own calculations.
| State | Solar MW
installed | Population:
thousands
| Solar Watts
per person
| Wind power
W/person
|
|---|
| NT | 18.7 | 242 | 77
| 0
|
| NSW+ACT | 884.9 | 7822 | 113
| 59
|
| Qld | 1308.0 | 4676 | 280
| 3
|
| SA | 586.7 | 1675 | 350
| 881
|
| Tas. | 82.3 | 513 | 160
| 600
|
| Vic. | 736.8 | 5769 | 128
| 185
|
| WA | 456.4 | 2536 | 180
| 190
|
| Aust. | 4073.8 | 23,233 | 175
| 146
|
|---|
The columns:
- State or territory name
- Total megawatts of installed small-scale solar PV in that state
- Population of that state in thousands
- Installed Watts of solar PV per person
- Installed Watts of utility-scale
wind power per person, for comparison
I have lumped the ACT in with NSW because it is not easy to separate the
two based on postcodes.
The table below shows the size of the solar installations discussed on this
page.
| World Insolation
|
|---|
|
| Acknowledgement WorlyParsons - EcoNomics
|
The map on the right shows insolation rates on the world's land areas;
the units, I believe, are kilowatt-hours per square metre per year.
The desert areas get the most sunlight because they have less cloud cover
than the better watered areas.
The map indicates that Australia has very high levels of solar power
available for development, the SW part of the US is the only other part of
a developed nation that comes close.
Insolation in Australia is shown in greater detail below.
| Australian Insolation
|
|---|
|
| Acknowledgement WorlyParsons - EcoNomics
|
The map on the right, using the same colour-coding as that above, shows
insolation within Australia.
Any of the areas coloured red would be very well suited for solar power.
By far the greatest problem in the economic use of solar power is due to the
low intensity at which it reaches the surface of the Earth.
Whatever is used to collect it must cover a large area and therefore must
be low in cost per unit of area covered.
In some applications the radiation is collected direct (eg. the common photo
voltaic panels) and in others the radiation is concentrated in some way.
Several methods of collecting solar power are (the links are to examples
illustrated on this page):
- Photo voltaic
- Flat pannel
collectors
- Crystaline silicon
- Amorphous silicon
- Gallium arsenide
- Dish concentrators (shine concentrated sunlight
onto relatively small PV panels that need to be actively cooled)
- Thermal
- No concentration
- Linear concentrators
- Trough concentrators
- Fresnel concentrators
- Array concentrators
- Power tower (a single collector in a large array of reflectors)
- Modular power towers (an array of power tower modules)
- Dish concentrators
- Repeated modules (many dishes of moderate size)
Photo voltaic systems generate electricity directly.
Thermal energy collectors heat something - usually a fluid, but possibly
something like a Stirling engine - as an intermediate step toward the
production of useful energy.
Several of the above methods have been brought to the stage of commercial
viability, the others have gone only to the pilot stage.
| |
|
This section added 2017/04/20
|
|
By Sophie Vorrath, April 20, 2017; in
OneStepOffTheGrid.
"Australian developed solar technology that aims to tackle the dominance of
diesel generators in the temporary power market will be tested at the 1 MW
scale in New South Wales, off the back of a new grant from the Australian
Renewable Energy Agency.
The modular, mobile solar power solution was developed by the Australian arm of
UK-based builder Laing O'Rourke, initially as a way to cut diesel fuel costs at the
company's own remote construction sites."
The article said that the solar unit, with optional battery storage and backup
diesel or gas generation, could be set up or removed in a matter of days.
This could prove to be very important in the future of solar power in Australia and
beyond.
| |
This section added 2017/04/11
Updated 2019/12/05
|
|
| |
| Location of Bungala solar farm
|
|---|
| Approximately 8km NNE of Port Augusta
I believe the road just to the west of the solar farm is Yorkey's
Crossing Road; the solar farm does not seem to be accessible from this road.
Image supplied by Port Augusta City Council
| |
On 2017/07/27 RenewEconomy carried an
article that stated that construction had started on the first 110 MW AC stage of a 275 MW DC, 220 MW AC solar power station.
Since then the whole project has been completed; see
Power Technology.
Earlier news releases had stated that the solar farm would occupy 800ha of
land owned by the Bungala Aboriginal Corporation.
It will be about 8km nor-nor-east of Port Augusta (not 12km east as stated in
the RenewEconomy article).
It will use tracking solar pannels.
I believe that, at the time of writing, Nyngan Solar Farm, at 102 MW, was the biggest in Australia.
Bungala will more than double that (if and when the whole thing is built).
Getting there
I visited Bungala on 2018/05/10.
While Yorkie's Crossing Road (the road to the lower left of the solar farm on the map on the right) goes very close, nothing of the farm is visible from Yorkie's Crossing Road.
To get to the farm from Port Augusta take Carlton Parade which leads onto Depot Creek Road – the road shown to the lower right of the farm on the map.
Two photos of Bungala under construction is below.
Note that you won't see much from the ground.
| Bungala Solar Farm, Stage 1, under construction
|
|---|
|
|
Photo taken with my drone, 2018/05/10
|
|
|
Photo taken from ground level, 2018/05/10
|
Also known as Mildura Solar Farm
| |
| Carwarp Solar Farm
|
|---|
| | Google Earth image; downloaded 2013/02/28
| |
ReNewEconomy carried an
article
on 2013/08/17 noting that this "power plant was officiall opened today",
and gave the installed capacity as 1.5 MW.
Solar Systems' pdf page on the project stated that it was
expected to cost about $1 million, have an installed capacity of 2 MW,
and generate 4 to 4.5 GWh per annum.
The Google Earth image on the right shows that a part was in place at the
time the photograph was taken.
A friend has since told me that it is (October 2013) completed.
The installation is about 1.7 km SW of Carwarp, which is about 28 km south
of Mildura.
There seems to be remarkably little on the Internet about the project,
but Solar Choice has a page
(dated 2012/02/22).
Juwi Renewable Energy PL has constructed a 10.6 MW solar farm at Sandfire
Resources' DeGrussa Copper Mine in WA.
Completion was announced on 2016/06/08.
This is of particular interest because the mining industry in Australia has
been remarkably slow to adopt renewable energy.
It has tended to stay with diesel power generation in spite of this being
much more expensive than solar PV.
Wikipedia gives LCOEs (Levelised Cost Of Energy) from investment bank
Lazard as between:
US$50-70/MWh for utility scale solar PV and
US$212-281/MWh for diesel recipricating engine.
Why has the mining industry been so slow to make use of solar PV?
Could it be an antipathy to the renewables industry because it is seen as a
competitor, or is it because mines generally have a fairly short life while
a solar PV system needs a few years of operation to financially justify its
capital costs?
Perhaps a combination of the two?
ARENA (Australian Renewable Energy Agency) has partly funded this development in the recognition that the take-up of renewables in the mining industry needed a kick-start.
Australia's first utility-scale solar farm was officially opened on
2012/10/10, see
RenewEconomy.
The solar farm is 10 MW, large in solar power terms, but small compared to
a typical wind farm.
It consists of 150 000 solar photovoltaic panels and is about 50km
south-east of Geraldton in Western Australia.
Latitude 28.904°, longitude 115.117°
| Google Earth image
|
|---|
|
Obtained from Internet on 2014/06/17
Thanks to Matt Kitching for telling me it was available
|
| |
| Floating PV panels proposed for Jamestown, South Australia
|
|---|
| | Image credit ABC
| |
This project seems to have come to nothing, which is a pity because it had some unique features.
The solar array would have had dual use; it would have reduced evaporation on the ponds as well as generating electricity.
At the same time, the water would have increased the efficiency of the panels by
keeping them cool.
The project was originally announced by Geits ANZ around May 2014.
They said they were intending to use the power plant
to supply 'behind the meter' power to one or more businesses that are at
some distance from the installation; in effect setting up a micro
grid quite separate from the eastern Australian electricity grid.
It will be about 600m from a saw mill and two and a half kilometres from
the centre of Jamestown.
It will supply cheap electricity that will replace expensive electricity
that would otherwise come from the power grid.
It seems that the company in charge of the project in June 2016 was
Infratech Industries, who have a not very informative
Net page on the project.
| |
| Pilot floating solar power installation
|
|---|
| | On common effluent ponds at Jamestown in Mid-North South
Austalia
| |
The photo on the right is all that was in place in late 2016.
| |
| Google Earth image
|
|---|
| | NSW, Latitude -33.3115°, Longitude 146.4097°
| |
Giles Parkinson and
Renew Economy
ran an article on this solar power installation and the
company that built it on
2013/04/18.
Giles wrote "An Australian solar thermal technology developer says it can
provide concentrated solar thermal energy to outback and remote locations
for just 8c/kWh, and hopes to sign for its first two commercial projects
within the next few months." and
"The distinguishing feature of Graphite Energy's technology
is that it uses graphite receivers that are mounted on towers to collect
heat reflected from a field of heliostats (mirrors), and its ability to
store energy via heat exchanges gives it an 'in-built' storage option that
delivers 'dispatchable' energy."
I'd like to thank Matt Kitching for allerting me to this.
Much of my spare time is taken up in trying to counter the disinformation
spread by the anti-wind power lobby and I cannot spend as much time and
effort on solar energy as I'd like to.
Solar Power Today has an
article on the Lake Cargelligo project, which it says is a 3 MW installation.
SPT said:
"The company [Graphite Energy] is already in talks with two potential
customers for its technology in remote areas of Western Australia.
These are probably mining related since it would require a minimum of 15 MW."
| |
|
This item added 2016/06/27
|
|
Fotowatio Renewable Ventures (FRV) has a
Net Page on the project.
As of 2016/06/27 the 56 MW project has a power purchase agreement with
Origin Energy in place and it had begun feeding electricity into the
Australian national electricity grid.
| |
| Nyngan Solar farm
|
|---|
| | My photo, 2017/04/05
| |
RenewEconmy carried an article
written by Sophie Vorrath on 2013/12/02 about what was claimed will be the
largest solar power station in the Southern Hemesphere, a Aus$300m,
102 MW PV installation at Nyngan in inland NSW.
The article said that it was to be owned by AGL, built by First Solar, and
that construction was to start in January 2014.
Australian manufacturing company IXL Group is to supply major structural
components for the project.
Completion is expected to be in June 2015.
It is expected that its 1 350 000 solar modules will generate
around 230 000 MWh of electricity per annum.
Also see
here for my visit to Nyngan solar farm in 2017.
On 2017/08/14 South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill announced that a
solar thermal power station would be built 30 km north of Port
Augusta, around 330 km north of the state capital, Adelaide.
| |
Aurora update; 2018/05/10
RenewEconomy
reported yesterday that Solar Reserve have applied for approval to add 70 MW of solar PV to the Aurora project.
While a solar thermal power station of the type proposed by Aurora heats the molten salt working fluid only with direct sunshine, the solar PV will generate power in the diffuse light of cloudy days as well, ensuring an energy feed every day, not just on the sunny days.
|
|
The state government has contracted USA company Solar Reserve to build and
operate the $650m 150 MW power station with 1,100 MWh of energy
storage.
It is expected that construction will start in 2018, be completed by 2020
and that the plant will deliver 495 GWh of electricity annually; about
5 per cent of SA's needs.
It seems that the government's commitment is to buy most of the power that they
need from the solar power station; there is expected to be excess that will be
sold to other consumers.
Government will pay a maximum of $78/MWh for the power it purchases.
More details...
Ketan Joshi wrote an excellent summary of the proposal and its background on
LinkedIn.
Solar Reserve, who will build and operate the solar power station, have a
net
page on the project.
Sophie Vorrath wrote an interesting
article in RenewEconomy.
It seems that some political dealing by Senator Nick Xenophon was involved in
making the project financially viable.
(Nick has a mixed past in regard to renewable energy, having made many
foolish and ill-informed statements
about wind power.)
A personal involvement
Having taken part in the 325 km Walk for Solar from Port Augusta to
Adelaide in 2012, aimed at producing exactly
this outcome, I'm very pleased to see a positive result at last.
| On the steps of Parliament House, Adelaide, at the end of the Walk for
Solar in 2012.
|
|---|
|
There was a rally at the end of the walk.
The people with the blue shirts are some of those who did the walk.
|
I put together an
album in Flickr shortly after the Walk for Solar.
RayGen's system combines solar PV with solar thermal.
It uses heliostats to concentrate sunlight onto a high-efficiency gallium arsenide solar panel on a tower.
The solar panel is cooled using water, but instead of this being an added cost the hot water is made available for whatever industrial processes might require heat (at around 95°C).
Of course the heat can be easily and cheaply stored for later use.
RayGen's Head of Sales, Will Mosley, claims that the RayGen system can provide 1MW ac electricity together with 2MW thermal energy for 8¢/kWh and Aus$8/giga-Joule (GJ).
RayGen have a 250kW commercial demonstration project running in Newbridge, Victoria with a further 500kW expansion planned.
Newbridge is about 30km west of Bendigo.
There is also a 250kW commercial demonstration in Zhuozhou, China.
This seems to me to have great potential.
Links
RayGen's Web site
One Stop Off The Grid's piece about RayGen
Search result for RayGen in RenewEconomy.
| |
| Royalla Solar Farm
|
|---|
| | Image credit, ABC. Artist's impression
| |
The 20 MW Royalla solar farm was opened on 2014/09/03.
It is about 17km south of Canberra.
The ACT is the most progressive of the states and teritories of Australia in
that it has a policy for 90% renewable energy by 2020.
This solar farm is the first of several planned.
| |
| Sundrop Farms – the solar power installation
|
|---|
| |
Photo taken with my drone
| |
I have mentioned the first stage of the Sundrop Farms development on
another page.
The proponents have a
Net page and a
Facebook page.
The highly innovative project uses seawater and a 40 MW solar thermal power station to grow tomatoes in greenhouses on arid saline land near Port Augusta.
The only other economic use the land has is fairly low-value grazing land.
The area is attractive for this sort of development because of the:
- abundant sunlight;
- abundant (highly saline) water;
- cheap land;
- nearby potential workforce;
- highway connection to markets and suppliers.
The proponents expect that the development will be fully operational some time
in the second half of 2016.
The solar power tower in the photo on the right started operating around
2016/06/10.
| The whole Sundrop Farm development
|
|---|
|
| Photo taken with my drone
|
| |
This section added 2018/12/28
Edited 2021/06/21
|
|
In late 2018 utility scale solar farms are being built in Australia at a great rate; however, so far as I can see, the question of what is to be done with the ground beneath the panels has not been settled – in fact I suspect that it has been given far less consideration than most other aspects of the solar farms.
During construction of
Bungala Solar Farm near Port Augusta, SA, there were major dust problems because much of the natural vegetation had been cleared, exposing the soil in this very dry area to wind erosion.
Surely it would have been better to leave the majority of the local arid-land vegetation in place rather than bulldozing everything?
The solution best suited at any solar farm will depend to a large extent on the local climate, in particular, the amount of rainfall.
In hotter and drier areas the shading from the panels could be advantageous to plantings, by keeping soil temperatures down and allowing soil moisture to be better conserved.
Suggestions from Abakus Solar
One of the few relevant Net pages that I could find was
Abakus Solar (As of 2021/06/21 the site was no longer available. Other sites are giving in
Other pages relating to agrophotovoltaics, below.)
It discussed several solutions:
- Sheep grazing;
- Low-growing grass;
- Decorative plants;
- Low-light crops;
- Mowing;
- Chemical controls;
- Physical barriers to vegetation.
My own impressions
I have had no direct experience with solar farms, but have had quite a bit to do with broad-acre plantings and weed control (far from always successfully).
It seems to me that in Australia in cases where native arid-land vegetation is present it would probably be best to leave it in place as far as possible.
Even if the natural vegetation is badly damaged during construction it would be much easier getting it re-established from that state than from bare ground.
Bare ground is always an attraction to weeds.
Beyond that, grazing sheep beneath and between the panels could often be the best option.
No treatment is without its disadvantages, but sheep grazing would have to have fewer disadvantages than most other treatments.
(Goats tend to be browsers while sheep tend more toward grazing. Goats would be far more inclined to chew electrical insulation than would sheep.)
If sheep grazing is to be used careful consideration must be given to the weed seeds that might come with the sheep; weed seeds can remain viable in a sheep's gut for several weeks and germinate when passed from the sheep.
Weed seeds can also be carried in the sheep's wool.
The other solutions discussed in the Abakus Solar article all have disadvantages covered in that article.
Keeping vegetation entirely out of the solar farm seems not to be a viable, or an environmentally attractive option; it would require heavy use of chemicals and would likely result in erosion and problematic amounts of water runoff following heavier rainfall events.
Ecogeneration has an
article titled "Solar farms, land use and the rise of solar sharing", that is interesting, informative and useful.
An article titled "Doubling up crops with solar farms could increase land-use efficiency by as much as 60%" written by Emma Bryce and published by Anthropocene Magazine 2017/12/01 is informative. It relates to research in Germany; the shade provided by solar panels could be much more advantageous to crops and grazing animals in Australia than in Germany, because of the former's higher temperatures, lower rainfalls and higher levels of insolation.
There is a lengthy document on the
Landscape Management Plan for a solar farm at Parks in NSW, but while it deals at some length with screen plantings of trees it seems to say little or nothing about the treatment of the ground beneath and between the panels.
| |
|
This section added 2012/04/10
|
|
| |
| Annual installations of solar photovoltaics
|
|---|
| | Image credit: Climate Spectator
| |
In an article in
Climate Spectator Tristan Edis pointed
out that the present Labor Government has a far better record in
developing sustainable energy than the previous Howard Coalition Government.
He produced the graphs on the right.
I have discussed the political aspects of this on my
page about the Liberal's war on renewable
energy.
The top graph shows that installation of solar photovoltaics in Australia
reached around 770 MW in 2011.
Of course the price of solar PV has been declining greatly over this time
span and this is a very important factor, however, there has been little
change in the price of solar water heaters and the third graph shows that
the installation of these has also increased markedly under Labor.
| |
| Annual installation of wind power capacity
|
|---|
| | Image credit: Climate Spectator
| |
This graph indicates that installation of wind power in any one year has not
been greater than about 510 MW, so the amount of solar (PV) installed in
2011 was greater than the amount of wind power installed in any year.
This is the first time that this has happened.
It is worth noting that while the
'installed capacity'
of solar installed in 2011 was greater than the installed capacity of wind
in the same year, the amount of electricity generated from the wind
turbines will be greater than that generated from the solar because the
capacity factor of wind is
about twice that of solar PV.
While assigning exactly when a wind farm should be considered finished is a
difficult and somewhat arbitrary matter (they come on line gradually over a
period of some months), these figures agree at least approximately with mine
that were calculated independently.
| |
| Number of solar and heat-pump water heaters sold in Australia per year
|
|---|
| | Image credit: Climate Spectator
| |
The last graph shows installations of heat pump and solar water heaters.
(While heat pump water heaters do not necessarily use sustainable energy
they were probably included in Tristan Edis's article because they are
much more energy-efficient than electric water heaters.)
Climate Spectator
carried an article on declining prices of solar PV, 2012/05/17, (relating
to a paper published on Bloomberg New Energy Finance).
The report suggested that "fully installed system cost of $3.01/Watt for
2012 and $2.00/Watt for 2015" and that the cost of power generated by solar
PV was now below residential grid-price parity in a number of countries
including Australia.
|
I found the graph below in Quora, 2012/06/12
|
|
Original source: Deutsche Bank
So, solar prices might reach parity with fossil fuels around 2015-2017
|
I got the graph from
http://www.quora.com/When-will-photovoltaic-solar-panels-become-cost-effective
There was a suggestion that it was already out of date and that solar
prices were actually lower than indicated.
Prices declined greatly in 2011 due to an oversupply of panels.
Once the oversupply situation resolves, prices might rise again?
Will solar outstrip wind?
Solar power to 2012 has been more expensive than utility-scale
wind power.
It seems that the price of solar power is continuing to decline, but
present indications seem to be that wind power is not getting any cheaper.
Solar could overtake wind power on costs in the next few years.
Margaret Hender is the prime mover of this great
organisation.
As Margaret says, it is
"people-powered and donation based.
It will enable people all over Australia to get on with the job of building
more renewable energy capacity instead of just waiting on government action."
Margaret is a wonderful person, devoted to getting action on climate change
in Australia.
So devoted, that even though she's no spring chicken (I don't think she'll
mind me saying that; I'm even older) she did the 328km Walk for Solar
Thermal Power from Port Augusta to Adelaide in September 2012.
The 2013 Australian Energy Market Operator's (AEMO) report titled
South Australian Electricity Report stated that rooftop solar accounted for
3.7% of SA's electricity generation in the 2012/13 financial year.
(Wind generated 27% of SA's power in 2012/13.)
The report stated that during the period from 2008/09 to 2012/13 solar PV
output rose from negligible levels to 497 GWh per year.
It was expected that rapid growth would continue.
On external sites
Large scale solar farm
map of Australia; Renew Economy
The mining industry is starting to realise that renewable energy is not some sort of greeny conspiracy.
An organisation called
Energy and Mines is helping spread the word that there is big money to be saved by remote mines changing from diesel-powered generation to solar PV.
They see
Australia becoming the Global Centre for Renewables for Mines.
External pages relating to agrophotovoltaics
Related pages on this site
Australia's energy future
South Australia's energy future
South Australia's success in adopting renewable energy
Solar power in Australia: a historical snapshot
