Solar Farm Investments & Build support

Plant Design

Premium Solar Panels and AC inversion Equipment are used for minimum maintenance and high durability. Our experience procurement team ensures the best equipment is supplied, with longest warranties and sequential serial numbers for batch testing.

There are no moving parts in a Solar Farms, they make reliable long-term power generation sources.  Blue Tongue Solar is one of the longest running commercial Australian Solar companies, with experience working with the 18 distribution networks and uses this background to adapt the best global processes for large scale plant deployment.

Sites

Land is leased or purchased and remains part of the asset for the production term.  Australia has abundant flat land and good access to the High transmission power grids enabling low cost – robust plant design.

Queensland, Victoria, NSW and South Australia have abundant sites with approved developments.

Build Costs

The competitive round – awarding our first 12 large scale solar farms in 2016 saw build costs of $2.20/w.

Due to better component prices and a more mechanized approach to farm builds, we saw prices of $1.75/w in 2017 and we should see $1.40/w by the end of 2018. 

As we gain experience and have teams coming off high volume sites, the figure should fall further towards $1.25/w in 2019.

Build experience

Blue Tongue Solar Pty Ltd is one of Australia’s longest running commercial solar providers.  Our commercial teams have experience to 420kw installs. The DC technology is the same as with a solar farm, although to ensure experience with the larger scale grid injection we utilise an international team with 400MW experience in solar farms built in Japan and Spain along with an installer currently working on 2 x 100MW plants in Australia.  Our commercial teams are integrated for long term maintenance and Blue Tongue Solar provides oversight, quality control, procurement, compliance design and logistics for the construction.

Monitoring and Maintenance

Individual array performance is monitored remotely in high detail to better schedule maintenance intervals and to ensure that production is within warranted limits.   We are continuing to refine inspection technology and will be utilising Automated-Drone Infrared cell analysis to reduce inspection labour on these solar plants.

Risk Factors for Solar Power Plants

Rebate

Solar Systems over 100kw that are under construction by 2020 are eligible to receive income derived from production. The Mechanism is called redemption of Large Generation Certificates (LGC). Amounts forecast are projections only and can change depending on policy surrounding Australia’s Renewable Energy Target and progress towards the target. Changes in LGC affect annual profits for the Solar Plant,

Currently the LGC market price is 8.412c/kW    or $84.12 / MW paid ¼ ly on production statements to the NEM (power exported to the National Energy Market)

Retail Power Purchase

Generated power for solar farms is sold to energy retailers in the form of revolving 2 to 4 year contracts. The longer the contract – the lower PPA you are offered. Normally the generation value increases over time due to rising electrical prices. Future contract prices listed are projections. PPA is signed as late as possible for better locked in pricing closer to time of commissioning.

Environmental

Solar plant production is sunlight dependent, therefore unforeseeable environmental factors that reduce sunlight intensity will reduce production levels.  Meteorological Irradiation data available from the Bureau of Meteorology.   Australia being a dry and mostly flat continent demonstrates reliable, high irradiation levels, making this power source a good long-term option.