Origin Energy : supporting solar with new power purchase agreements

The 10.8 MW Lakeland project comprises 41,400 solar panels and 5.3 MWh battery on 45 hectares of land on the Mulligan Highway near Lakeland in far north Queensland. Construction is expected to take approximately nine months.

'With our third large scale solar PPA in the past 12 months, Origin is working towards an aspiration to be Australia's largest renewables company, emerging as one of Australia's largest single investors in utility scale solar,' Origin Energy Markets CEO Frank Calabria said.

'This has included signing agreements for 156 megawatts of solar power in NSW and Queensland and progressing plans for a 106 MW solar farm adjacent to our Darling Downs power station in south east Queensland, Australia's proposed largest solar development site.

Origin also last week announced an agreement with French solar developer Neoen to purchase all the Large-scale Generation Certificates (LGCs) from a 10.6 MW solar farm supplying the DeGrussa copper and gold mine in Western Australia.

'Power purchase agreements like the Lakeland contract support the renewables sector and give developers certainty to continue investing in new projects,' Mr Calabria said.

'We have the flexibility in our generation portfolio to significantly grow our interest in renewables, particularly as the cost of solar continues to fall.

The Lakeland project features a 5.3 MWh battery and is one of the first wave of Australian 'edge-of-grid' projects.

'Edge of grid technology will play a growing role in our energy markets and we're excited to be involved in a project that involves large scale battery storage and how we can smooth out intermittent sources of power like solar when they are affected by factors such as cloud cover,' Mr Calabria said.

The PPA runs until 2030.