Australian engineering company Downer EDI has secured engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract from First Solar for the 87MW Beryl solar farm in New South Wales.
Image: Downer secures EPC contract from First Solar to build Australian solar farm. Photo: Courtesy of khunaspix/FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
Australian engineering company Downer EDI has secured engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract from First Solar for the 87MW Beryl solar farm in New South Wales.
The solar farm will be located about 5km west of Gulgong in New South Wales. EPC contract for the solar farm is worth about A$150m ($113m).
Downer CEO Grant Fenn said: “Large scale projects are critical to our regional communities and we are looking forward to partnering with First Solar to deliver the Beryl Solar Farm that will see significant economic and environmental benefits in regional New South Wales.”
When it begins operations, the Beryl Solar farm will generate electricity without any water use, emissions and waste production and will have a very small carbon footprint.
The solar farm, with its 260,000 advanced solar modules, will produce enough clean energy which could be supplied to an average of 25,000 average New South Wales homes while offsetting about 167,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year.
Downer has also secured a notice to proceed under the EPC contract and construction is scheduled to take about 12 months.
First Solar Asia Pacific vice president Steven Jackson said: “We look forward to working with Downer to successfully deliver the project. The Beryl Solar Farm will be one of the first large scale renewable projects to use First Solar’s Series 6 thin film photovoltaic modules.
“Series 6 modules deliver more watts per connection than crystalline silicon modules. This enables Downer to realize construction cost savings while maximising the energy production for the project site, resulting in a lower levelised cost of energy.”
In April, First Solar announced a manufacturing plant in the US with $400m of investment. The plant is expected to create about 500 new jobs and will produce about 1.GW of solar modules per year.
At the new plant, which will be located in the US state of Ohio, it will start producing its Series 6 thin film PV modules.