Home › Posts tagged Mark Bailey

Mark Bailey

SMC / Sun Metals Solar Farm Project

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Korean owned North Queensland zinc refiner Sun Metals has begun building a 125MW, $199m solar farm to underpin its refinery in Townsville. The Sun Metals solar farm will be completed next year and is another of many massive ongoing solar projects in North Queensland. 

Sun Metals Solar Farm

Sun Metals Solar Farm
Sun Metals Solar Farm (source: sunmetals.com.au)

Construction on the solar farm began in May – it’s expected to be completed early next year, and fully commissioned (providing renewable energy to the refinery) by April. The project will include 1.3 million solar panels and, according to a release by the Queensland Government, will create 210 solar powered jobs.  Queensland energy minister Mark Bailey praised the project, saying “Use of renewable energy in this way not only demonstrates it as a reliable energy source for large-scale industry, but that Korea Zinc is committed to the people of North Queensland, to minimising carbon emissions and protecting the Great Barrier Reef.”

First Solar have been chosen to undertake the project. They have over 500MW in the pipeline for the next 12 months, including the Hayman and Daydream solar farms. 

About Sun Metals

Sun Metals is a subsidiary of Korea Zinc – they’ve already spent around $1b on the Townsville zinc refinery and, according to the Courier Mail, the 116MW the Sun Metals solar farm provides will account for around 1/3 of their energy needs – so there’s plenty of room to expand. PV Magazine said Sun Metals produce 225,000 tonnes of zinc p.a. and that requires over 900,000 mWh of electricity. 

Sun Metals CEO Yun Choi said in May that “The SMC Solar Farm investment of $199 million is the first step in Korea Zinc ensuring the long term viability of the existing refinery and also underpinning the potential for its expansion using world class new technology, with an investment decision due in late 2017,”

Jack Curtis of First Solar was quoted as saying that “This project represents the viability of the commercial and industrial solar market in Australia and the growing trend of major energy consumers owning and operating renewable energy assets.”

Whilst far from being the first example of renewable energy in resources, it’s great to see these big companies work at reducing their carbon footprint as the benefits (e.g. cost, price fluctuation protection, environmentally friendly nature) of solar becomes more and more attractive. 

Read More Solar News:

Darling Downs Solar Grid Risks

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

A substantial rise in solar PV farms on the Darling Downs risks causing major issues with energy supply networks if urgent grid updates are not undertaken to ensure the Darling Downs solar grid is future-proofed.

Darling Downs Solar Grid

According to The Chronicle, six projects worth almost $2 billion are planned for the Darling Downs region over the next few years. This includes a 5000-hectare plant at Millmerran (the largest solar farm in Australia), and the $200 million, 100MW Yarranlea solar farm.

State Minister for Energy, Biofuels and Water Supply Mark Bailey told the Toowoomba and Surat Basin Enterprise National Energy Summit “at this stage” the Queensland Government don’t have any grid upgrades for the Toowoomba area planned – noting that they have upgraded the transmission line in North Queensland “because we’ve got so many projects happening there.” Bailey said that “…we will continue to review our system to make sure we can facilitate these projects.”

Federal Minister for Resources Senator Matthew Canavan was also drawn into the conversation, advising that we should be careful with the amount of renewable energy we source if we don’t have a clear path forward with regards to grid stability: “We shouldn’t push renewables up above 40% without a proper plan of knowing how to keep the lights on when renewables are not there,” he said. “That’s what they did in South Australia and they put their own state and businesses there at great risk.”

Darling Downs Solar Yarranlea
Yarranlea Solar Plant (source: yarranleasolar.com.au)

The Chief Executive of Yarranlea Solar, Nick Canto, said that “major infrastructure upgrades” were required as the existing grid will not have the capacity to deal with the increased power load. Canto was also quoted on the 11th discussing Toowomba and the Surat Basin’s ‘extensive electrical transmission network’ – so it looks like he’s more worried about the grid’s ability to deal with such a large amount of renewable energy from multiple solar farms.

Read More Solar News:

Queensland solar tariff buyout scheme vetoed, altered.

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

Back in the days of solar power’s infancy, the QLD government (most states in Australia also ran their own separately) ran a plan where users feeding solar power back into the grid could receive a ‘premium’ feed-in tariff of $0.44/kWh. With the growing technology behind battery storage and solar panel technology, the 238,000 customers that will remain on the grandfathered premium Queensland solar tariff plan until 2028 pose a threat to the budget and the government have decided to try and figure out a way to ensure it doesn’t become a problem in the future – and they’ve decided to do this via a crackdown on excess battery storage.

Queensland Solar Tariff History

Customers who applied for the Queensland Solar Bonus Scheme before 10 July 2012 and maintain their eligibility can continue to receive a feed-in tariff of 44 cents. Be aware these grandfathered plans are at least 400% more generous than anything you’ll get in 2017 so check before making any changes that may affect your 0.44c! This feed-in tariff is closed to new solar customers and will expire in on July 1, 2028.

With battery storage becoming the norm, there was a push last year (championed by Ergon Energy) to buyout the users of this this tariff or include a ‘voluntary swap’ with battery storage – unsurprisingly this was met warmly by the battery storage industry and the solar industry. It was, however, quashed by the Queensland Productivity Commission in late 2016 as the cost (~$9,000 per household) was deemed too high.

Queensland Energy Minister Mark Bailey introduced a bill on June 15 to limit the amount of energy solar power consumers can feed into the main grid, telling the Courier Mail that it was necessary to stop customers ‘gaming the system’. This is due to projections showing the cost of the scheme could have grown by 25% by 2028 – which would, according to Bailey, raise the cost from $4.1 billion to $5.1 billion. As per the ABC, as part of the new bill those under the Solar Bonus Scheme would no longer be able to feed energy into the grid while taking power from their battery.

Bailey was quoted as saying: “You can either use your solar PV to generate power for your property, or you can use the power coming from your battery,”and “When the Solar Bonus Scheme was first established, new technologies like batteries were not a consideration.”

Mark Bailey Energy Minister - Queensland Solar Tariff Crackdown
Mark Bailey MP on Queensland Solar Tariff Crackdown (source abc.net.au / Patrick Williams)

Further Reading – Queensland Solar Bonus Scheme

The Electricity Act 1994 and the Electricity Regulation 2006 set out many of the rules that apply to the 44 cent premium feed-in tariff. Bailey’s bill is due to be debated later this year and we’ll keep you posted on its progress.

Read More Solar News:

QLD Solar Power – Statistics and Information

Posted on by — No Comments ↓

QLD Solar Power as a whole now produces more energy than the highest capacity power station in the state.

Queensland has 1,805mw of solar PV capacity created by residential and business – this is bigger than the 1,780mw the Gladstone coal fired power station produces. In March 2017, Queenslanders added 25mw of rooftop solar – thus breaking the record and overtaking the Gladstone plant. In Australia there are 1.5m solar powered homes and they generate approximately 50% of their own electricity. As the price of panels, inverters and storage drops lower and efficiency grows we will see this increase as a result.  The 25mw of PV solar was the biggest month for solar installations in Queensland since 2012 and the overtaking was flagged in a speech by QLD Energy Minister Mark Bailey last month at a battery storage conference in Brisbane. Bailey was quoted as saying “…the combined solar rooftops are now the second largest power generator, just behind the 1680 MW Gladstone Power Station”.

QLD Solar Power stats – now over 32% of homes

According to head of the Energy Storage Council John Grimes, “Over 32 per cent of homes in Queensland have solar panels on their rooftops, so it’s actually the biggest power plant in Queensland, which is a fantastic achievement.” Grimes also noted that there hasn’t been too much government subsidy in getting to this point (the old $0.44c / mwh plans were grandfathered back in 2012) and that “(reaching this solar milestone is) just about governments getting out of the way and letting cost-effective technology actually do its job”.

QLD Solar Power

QLD Solar Power (source: reneweconomy.com.cau)

The potential of solar for rural communities

On the ABC, Tim Latimer of Redback Technologies noted that “There’s many, many Indigenous communities around Australia in remote regions that pay upwards of 60 cents per kilowatt on energy because of the diesel generation costs.” With solar + storage now easily reaching 50% of that, there’s a massive amount of scope for outback Australia to embrace solar power and solar energy storage. At half the cost with none of the noise or pollution and no need for constant refilling, it seems like a no brainer. Hopefully this is something the government and companies can sort out sooner rather than later – for the benefit of everybody.

Read More Solar News: