http://m.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/toowoomba-council-approves-1bn-solar-farm/story-fnn8dlfs-1227216531992

APPROVAL has been given for the largest solar farm in the country — and possibly the largest proposed in the world — to be built in Queensland.

Construction on the 13,000-acre Bulli Creek site near Powerlink’s substation near Millmerran, southwest of Toowoomba, is expected to start next year. It will be on cleared, flat cattle grazing land.

Developer Solar Choice has received approval from Toowoomba Regional Council for a total footprint of up to 2 gigawatts over the next eight years.

The solar farm will be built in stages of multiple 100MW-plus phases, within a total planning approved envelope of 2GW.

“The Bulli Creek project is attracting attention from a range of global investors prepared to take a medium- and long-term view,” Solar Choice said, stating it remained open to a large-scale investor.

——

This is surprising for a few reasons. The investors must have considerable faith that carbon pricing will return for much of the 35 year operating period.

Also, this is literally 100 times bigger than the biggest photovoltaic plant in existence in Australia at present. It’s quite a jump.

The pricing also seems optimistic. The Chinese are making some pretty cheap PVs now thanks to economies of scale in silicon production, but 50 cents per peak watt installed will be quite a trick.

The sun has always effected that areas exports. Langer and Pauline Hanson being obvious examples.

>>The investors must have considerable faith that carbon pricing will return for much of the 35 year operating period.

What led you to that conclusion?

Peak Warming Man said:

>>The investors must have considerable faith that carbon pricing will return for much of the 35 year operating period.

What led you to that conclusion?

A fair question and a pertinent one. It was not a reasonable conclusion as there are a host of other possibilities.

Perhaps the give-away line is:
“stating it remained open to a large-scale investor.”

The solar towers that never happened come to mind.

Or maybe solar-voltaic really is economic on that scale now.

Also the scheme is really an unspecified number of 100 MW modules, with an upper limit of 20.

100 MW is still pretty big, but only 1/20th as big as 2 GW.

As I mentioned above, the Chinese are about to manufacture PVs cheaply, less than 1 USD per peak watt for the panels.

But given that there are installation and other equipment costs (inverters etc) there is still an air gap between current pricing and the stated pricing for this Darling Downs project of 0.5 AUD per peak watt.

dv said:

As I mentioned above, the Chinese are about to manufacture PVs cheaply, less than 1 USD per peak watt for the panels.

But given that there are installation and other equipment costs (inverters etc) there is still an air gap between current pricing and the stated pricing for this Darling Downs project of 0.5 AUD per peak watt.

It does sound similar to the solar towers project.

SEQ solar plans scrapped in favour of regional solar
13th Nov 2012

CLEAN energy initiatives in Queensland took another hit this week after the Federal Government abandoned a $1 billion solar plant in southern Queensland.
The $1.1 billion Solar Dawn project, originally proposed for land near the Kogan Creek power station, was scrapped, to move the funds to other projects in regional areas.
The decision comes about two years after the State Government scrapped a plan for a multi-million-dollar clean coal upgrade at the Kogan Creek Power Station.
But the cancellation of Solar Dawn, and another clean energy project in Victoria, will see the $2.2 billion funds re-allocated to smaller solar and clean energy projects around regional remote Australia.
———————————————————————————-

There is a chequered history to solar projects in SEQ

Actually I found that while searching for information about a small solar farm just off the road coming into Stanthorpe.

keeps searching

Energy intensities, EROIs, and energy payback times of electricity
generating power plants

D. Weißbacha,b, G. Ruprechta
, A. Hukea,c, K. Czerskia,b, S. Gottlieba
, A. Husseina,d

Abstract
The Energy Returned on Invested, EROI, has been evaluated for typical power plants representing wind
energy, photovoltaics, solar thermal, hydro, natural gas, biogas, coal and nuclear power. The strict exergy
concept with no ”primary energy weighting”, updated material databases, and updated technical procedures
make it possible to directly compare the overall efficiency of those power plants on a uniform mathematical
and physical basis. Pump storage systems, needed for solar and wind energy, have been included in the
EROI so that the efficiency can be compared with an ”unbuffered” scenario. The results show that nuclear,
hydro, coal, and natural gas power systems (in this order) are one order of magnitude more effective than
photovoltaics and wind power.

Keywords:
ERoEI, EROI, energy return on invested, energy intensity, energy payback time, life cycle assessment

EMROI – Energy Money Returned on Invested

.

Rebuttal: “Comments on ‘Energy intensities, EROIs (energy returned on invested), and energy payback times of electricity generating power plants’ – Making clear of quite some confusion”

Marco Raugei
Michael Carbajales-DaleCharles J. Barnhart
Vasilis Fthenakis

Energy (Impact Factor: 4.16). 01/2015; DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2014.12.060

ABSTRACT – Serious methodological errors in a paper by Weißbach et al. invalidate their results.
- The origin of such errors is investigated and explained.
- Weißbach et al.‘s findings and conclusions are rebutted.

Boris said:

Rebuttal: “Comments on ‘Energy intensities, EROIs (energy returned on invested), and energy payback times of electricity generating power plants’ – Making clear of quite some confusion”

Marco Raugei
Michael Carbajales-DaleCharles J. Barnhart
Vasilis Fthenakis

Energy (Impact Factor: 4.16). 01/2015; DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2014.12.060

ABSTRACT – Serious methodological errors in a paper by Weißbach et al. invalidate their results.
- The origin of such errors is investigated and explained.
- Weißbach et al.‘s findings and conclusions are rebutted.

can you also post Weißbach et al’s response to the rebuttal?

DFTT, Boris

dv said:

http://m.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/toowoomba-council-approves-1bn-solar-farm/story-fnn8dlfs-1227216531992

——

This is surprising for a few reasons. The investors must have considerable faith that carbon pricing will return for much of the 35 year operating period.

Also, this is literally 100 times bigger than the biggest photovoltaic plant in existence in Australia at present. It’s quite a jump.

The pricing also seems optimistic. The Chinese are making some pretty cheap PVs now thanks to economies of scale in silicon production, but 50 cents per peak watt installed will be quite a trick.

Yeah, it’s big.
That Courier Mail article appears to be the only reference, I can’t find any mention of the project on the Toowoomba Regional Council website, or Solar Choice, or Powerlink’s website either.

Fully operational it would be capable of producing around 10GW hours / day.*

*based on the ‘annual mean daily solar exposure’ for Toowoomba.

They will need to construct & commission 250MW each year to meet their 8 year target plan.

This solar power plant is eligible to create Large-scale Generation Certificates (LGCs)
As part of the Governments Large-scale Renewable Energy Target (LRET) to generate 41,000 GW hours by 2020.

Obviously this will feed into Powerlink’s substation near Millmerran, and as part of the fossil fuel power generators requirement to purchase and surrender LGCs each year, this will be an ongoing income stream for the solar plant.
LGCs are available for every 1 megawatt hour (MWh) of net renewable energy transmitted to electricity consumers.

The Clean Energy Regulator has calculated a 2015 volume weighted average market price for LGCs
Which is: $29.38

LGCs are currently trading at: $37

can you also post Weißbach et al’s response to the rebuttal?

why can’t you?

DFTT? DV.

Boris said:

can you also post Weißbach et al’s response to the rebuttal?

why can’t you?

DFTT? DV.

‘Don’t feed the troll’ I think.

ahhhh. so obvious when you think of it.

:-)

where does 2 Gigawatts sit with everything?

CrazyNeutrino said:

where does 2 Gigawatts sit with everything?

Well, Australia needs another 8 GW to meet its renewable energy target by 2020, so it gets us about 25% of the way there.

FWIW, the energy payback time for modern photovoltaics for a place like that (5 kWh per day insolation) will be around 18 months.
Now, funny thing: the GHG payback time depends on the GHG-intensity of the energy used to create the PV and the GHG-intensity of the energy the PV is replacing. But China and Qld are both quite “coaly”, so again we are looking at around 18 months GHG payback time.

Financial payback time is harder to guess because it will depend on government policy etc but I am still not believing that 0.50 dollars per watt.

5 kWh per day insolation
—-
Should that have an area term in it?

it is usually per square metre.

Michael V said:

5 kWh per day insolation
—-
Should that have an area term in it?

Good catch. Per square metre.

2.471 × 10^-5 furlong²

sibeen said:

2.471 × 10^-5 furlong²

Smarty!

I reckon you need more significant figures considering it’s such a small fraction.

2.471053814671652 × 10^-5 furlong^2</sup?<>

sibeen said:

2.471053814671652 × 10^-5 furlong²

That should do it.

;)

5 kWh per day per square metre equals 750 tonnes per cubic second. Hope this helps.

dv said:

FWIW, the energy payback time for modern photovoltaics for a place like that (5 kWh per day insolation) will be around 18 months.

What energy payback are you referring to, DV?
Can you be more specific, elaborate?

I think I know what you mean, but ….

What exactly does the term ‘baseline’ refer to, in respect of the electricity generated by a power station?

Energy payback time is the amount of time it takes for a power source to produce an amount of energy equal to that required to make that source, including mining and refining of materials, transportation, construction etc.

dv said:

Energy payback time is the amount of time it takes for a power source to produce an amount of energy equal to that required to make that source, including mining and refining of materials, transportation, construction etc.

If the energy payback & the GHG payback occur in parallel over the first 18 months of operation of a 2GW solar PV plant, that seems a very reasonable time frame for the plant to become carbon neutral.

Considering the plant should have an operation scope of 25+ years, (Panels/inverters could easily be replaced in strings as required)