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The Australian wind and solar boom is expected to be operational until 2019, after a record year, despite network constraints and the increased vigilance of network operators to ensure that new projects do not cause blackouts. current identical to those of two years ago.
Abundant wind and sun, lower turbine and panel costs, and companies' demand to protect against rising electricity rates have attracted dozens of international developers looking to build wind and solar farms Down Under.
Even though developers have come across energy policy shifts, a constrained network that has trouble integrating intermittent renewable energy and unexpected connection costs, they still view Australia as a growing market .
"We think we have a great future in Australia because we have the right answers," said Xavier Barbaro, chief executive of Neoen, whose biggest market is Australia.
Companies such as Neoen, his compatriot Total-Eren, Indian companies Adani, American AES Corp and German Sonnen are expanding in Australia, seeking to fill a void as aging coal plants are retired over the next two decades .
"Confidence is high as the industry enters 2019, with unprecedented levels of construction activity underway," said Anna Freeman, director of the Clean Energy Council, an industry group.
Australia produces nearly 20% of its electricity from renewable energy. This figure is expected to reach 75% over the next 20 years.
According to the Clean Energy Council, 14.7 gigawatts (GW) of large-scale solar and wind projects worth $ 20 billion ($ 14 billion) were under construction or have reached their financial close. 39 last year, more than double the 2017 record.
This rush of projects, with no clear indication of where they feel best, has led to an "element of lawlessness," but it is changing, said Simon Currie, founder of Energy Estate Consulting. The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), the Energy Council and the network companies are developing clear guidelines on the location of the plants and how to connect them to the grid.
"We're moving from what was an opportunistic approach (…) to something much more planned," said Currie, whose company hopes to develop Australia's largest renewable energy center, with 4 GW's worth. 39, wind, solar and pumped. capacity in New South Wales.
Renewable energy projects added to the grid increased from 22 with a capacity of 1.2 GW in 2013 to a record 45 projects with an increase of 2.9 GW in 2018, said AEMO. There are 114 other requests representing 15.9 GW pending, which suggests many congestion problems.
The main challenge is that developers are all trying to connect to a network spanning 5,000 km of Queensland, North, South Australia and Tasmania.
This network was designed to produce primarily electricity from coal-fired power plants located near three major mining areas, while wind and solar farms generate intermittent power from sites. more distant, where network capacity can be limited.
To keep the network stable, add equipment such as "synchronous condensers" or batteries, which can increase costs by at least $ 20 million for a single capacitor. The batteries could be much higher.
Developers who did not address these issues experienced delays in approving projects or connecting to the network, resulting in unexpected costs, which in one case led to bankruptcy. RCR engineering firm Tomlinson last November.
HOOK-UP HICCUPS
A clean energy council study conducted in December by the Clean Energy Council revealed that the grid connection was the industry's main concern in 2019, Freeman said.
Octopus Investments, a UK-based investor in the solar energy industry, said the network problems took two years to choose its first investment in Australia. The Darlington Point Solar Farm is about to begin construction and will be the largest in the country.
"The grid is the main problem where badets fail in our project filter," said Sam Reynolds, chief executive of Octopus, at Reuters.
Developers and project lenders said that they had to take into account network congestion, which could limit the current supplying the grid through a single plant; intermittence of wind and solar energy, affecting the flow of current; and transmission losses, called marginal loss factors (MLFs).
"There is a bit of nervousness around MLFs, cuts, and then risks for construction and commissioning," said Stephen Panizza, Renewable Energy Manager at Federation Asset Management.
MLFs measure energy lost on power grids and have increased, with renewable energy projects being located outside the grid, weakening returns for some operators.
Another factor is the cost of the additional technology to maintain the constant current on the network as intermittent energy is added.
In November, the French group Total-Eren decided to buy a synchronous capacitor in order to conclude a connection agreement allowing it to build the $ 330 million Australian Kiamal Solar Park in Victoria.
Delays due to discussions with AEMO on the capacitor have however led Total-Eren to lose one of its power purchase agreements (PPAs).
Michael Vawser, director of Total-Eren for the Asia-Pacific region, said other projects would encounter the same problem.
"I think that there are other projects … caught off guard by the new network regulations that will lose their PPAs due to delays in the authorization to connect to the network", has Vawser told Reuters during an interview in November.
Neoen, which has built 1 GW of wind and solar farms and the largest battery in the world in Australia in the last four years, said in a recent prospectus that it has collected 14 million euros ($ 16 million) from damages of an entrepreneur building three solar parks, connection delays.
Despite the challenges, Neoen, Total-Eren and their rivals are still looking for new opportunities for Australia.
"Australia is still an attractive market for us," said Vawser.
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