The Western Downs Green Power Hub is a large renewable energy project owned and operated by Neoen near

Chinchilla Chinchilla refers to either of two species ('' Chinchilla chinchilla'' and '' Chinchilla lanigera'') of crepuscular rodents of the parvorder Caviomorpha, and are native to the Andes mountains in South America. They live in colonies called "her ...

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

, Australia. It consists of The 460 MWp (direct current) Western Downs Solar Farm and a 540 MW / 1080 MWh grid battery. The solar farm consists of over one million solar panels to generate 400

megawatt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of Power (physics), power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantification (science), quantify the rate of Work ...

s of (alternating current) power. It utilizes 72-cell bi-facial solar modules on single-axis trackers; a system that tracks the sun throughout the day. It was the largest solar farm in Australia for some time. The 1,500 hectare solar farm is owned and operated by

Neoen Neoen is a French producer of exclusively renewable energy headquartered in Paris, France. Founded in 2008, it develops, finances, builds and operates solar power plants, onshore wind farms and energy storage solutions. As at 31 December 2024, ...

. The state government-owned renewable energy operator CleanCo Queensland has signed an agreement to purchase 80% of the project's capacity. Construction began in June 2020. The solar farm was built by Sterling & Wilson. Exports to the

grid Grid, The Grid, or GRID may refer to: Space partitioning * Regular grid, a tessellation of space with translational symmetry, typically formed from parallelograms or higher-dimensional analogs ** Grid graph, a graph structure with nodes connec ...

had begun by August 2022. The final solar panel was installed on 1 May 2023. The event was attended by state premier

Annastacia Palaszczuk Annastacia Palaszczuk ( , born 25 July 1969) is an Australian politician who served as the 39th premier of Queensland from 2015 to 2023. She held office as the leader of the Queensland branch of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) from 2012 unt ...

. The 540 MW / 1080 MWh big battery is being built in 2 stages. Construction of Stage 1 of the battery had begun by January 2023, and completed with grid forming inverters in June 2025. Construction of Stage 2 began in August 2024. The PV station and battery, along with two other batteries, are connected to the national grid via the Western Downs substation and a new 275 kilovolt line constructed by

Powerlink Queensland Powerlink Queensland (formally the Queensland Electricity Transmission Corporation Limited) is a transmission system operator owned by the Queensland Government which operates high-voltage electricity transmission infrastructure throughout Queens ...

. Battery containers for a 270MW/540MWh section are made in Shanghai.

References

External links

*https://westerndownsgreenpowerhub.com.au/ {{Energy in Queensland Western Downs Region Solar power stations in Queensland 2023 establishments in Australia Energy infrastructure completed in 2023

See also

References

External links