Solar’s new sweet spot: compact PV plants at $1 a watt

There’s been a lot of attention paid to the big boom in large scale solar in Australia over the past nine months, with more than 2.4GW under construction across the country, and another 8GW in the pipeline, by RenewEconomy’s estimates.

The focus has been on the big end of this construction boom, but something interesting is happening at the smaller end of the market – the emergence of quick-to-build, compact MW scale solar plants that are redefining the technology’s economics.

The majority of large scale solar plants are slowed down by connection issues and getting a power purchase agreement and finance. But there has been no such inhibition for YD Projects, which this week completed the first of a number of solar projects on the NSW/Queensland border.

The 4.77MW Chillamurra solar plant at Goondiwindi was built in just four months, and the next, a 10.9MW solar plant at Barcaldine in Queensland, will likely take less time.

Read the story by Giles Parkinson on RenewEconomy - “Solar’s new sweet spot: compact PV plants at $1 a watt.”