The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has awarded support to 12 solar power projects with a combined 482MW that will unlock more than $1bn of investment.
The agency will provide $91.7m to six plants in Queensland, five in New South Wales and one in Western Australia following a competitive tender, it said.
The selected projects are expected to triple Australia’s large-scale solar capacity to 720MW from 240MW.
All facilities could be built by the end of next year, according to the agency.
The same competitive tender approach could be adopted to speed up the commercialisation of other clean energy technologies such as battery storage, con-centrating solar thermal and bioenergy, it said.
“When we announced the round in September last year we expected $100 million of grant funding would enable around 200MW of new projects,” Arena chief executive Ivor Frischknecht said. “We’ve achieved more than double that through this round with $92 million funding supporting around 480MW in total.”
“As a result of our efforts, the ARENA funding ask for big solar projects has dropped significantly from half of total project costs to just 10% on averaage,” he said. “This means that every dollar of ARENA funding is leveraging $10 from other sources in this round.”
Image: sxc
Oz backs 482MW of solar
Australian Renewable Energy Agency awards $91.7m to 12 projects following auction
By EBS