C&I customers to offtake 25% of generation from Australia's biggest … – pv magazine Australia

by | Feb 1, 2023 | Engineer

Commercial and industrial energy retailer SmartestEnergy Australia have signed a power purchasing agreement with Octopus Australia to offtake 25% of generation from its Darlington Point Solar Farm in New South Wales.
A 25 MW / 50 MWh battery with advanced inverters is planned to be installed adjacent to the Darlington Point Solar farm.
Image: Edify Energy
SmartestEnergy Australia, a subsidiary of Japanese business conglomerate Marubeni, has entered into a “long-term agreement” with renewables business Octopus Australia to buy a quarter of the generation from its 333 MW (DC) Darlington Point Solar Farm in the mid-south of NSW.
The exact duration of the power purchasing agreement (PPA) was not revealed, but the agreement will see retailer SmartestEnergy Australia offer the renewable power to commercial and industrial companies, it said.
Darlington Point Solar Farm was commissioned in 2020 and is the largest solar farm in Australia with nearly 1 million solar panels, supplying enough energy to power 110,000 households annually. It was previously held by Edify Energy and Octopus Australia jointly, but was acquired fully by the latter in. 2022.
Octopus Australia has been pushing the envelope on renewables since entering the market from its base in the United Kingdom, where its owner Octopus Group operates. Speaking to pv magazine Australia, Managing Director Sam Reynolds said the company realised quite quickly it would have to shift its approach in Australia, where he says both the renewables markets and projects were “more difficult.”
Its approach was to develop technical expertise across key areas including grid, engineering and community engagement, and bring these teams together with its fund management arm. “Different people and different worlds, so getting them under the one roof to all work and talk to each other,” Reynolds said.
Developing this cooperation between different arms of the company has been key for Octopus Australia, he added, and has given it a point of difference in a market that is screaming out for better communication between financial and engineering players.
To that end, the company last year introduced two new investment platforms for the Australian market. Its OASIS fund focuses on big institutional investors while the OREO fund is open to smaller investors. These funds are then aggregated and used to invest not in singular renewable projects but diversified portfolios. 
“There’s some different things in each [fund], but pretty much it allows wholesale investors and mums and dads to invest alongside big institutional investors and get access to big projects in Australia.”
In fact, the first project jointly acquired by the OASIS and OREO funds was the the Darlington Point Solar Farm.
The company has also been paying an unusual amount of attention to questions of land stewardship – something sadly often overlooked in renewables industries. In 2022, it announced its joint venture Desert Springs Octopus with Traditional Owners in the Northern Territory. 
In terms of Darlington Point Solar Farm, Octopus Australia said it has invested over $5.5 million (USD 3.87 million) to establish a biodiversity stewardship scheme safeguarding large areas of native grasslands on the site and “offsetting” any impact from the development of the solar farm. These grasslands, separate to the solar farm, are undergoing registration under the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016 (NSW) protecting them from further development.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
More articles from Bella Peacock
Please be mindful of our community standards.
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *







By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.
Legal Notice Terms and Conditions Privacy Policy © pv magazine 2023
pv magazine Australia offers bi-weekly updates of the latest photovoltaics news.
We also offer comprehensive global coverage of the most important solar markets worldwide. Select one or more editions for targeted, up to date information delivered straight to your inbox.
This website uses cookies to anonymously count visitor numbers. To find out more, please see our Data Protection Policy.
The cookie settings on this website are set to “allow cookies” to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click “Accept” below then you are consenting to this.
Close

source