NSW is about to overtake the Sunshine State on big scale solar production

• Queensland, the Sunshine State, is about to shed its mantle as the largest state in Australia for the manufacturing lots of electrical energy from large scale solar.

According to new data from analysts at Rystad Energy, Queensland generated 263GWh (gigawatt hours) of big scale solar result in August, simply ahead of NSW with 261GWh. In total amount, there was almost 700GWh of PV generation in August, up 40 per cent from the same month last year.

Yet Rystad's David Dixon states NSW is expected by the end of the year to redeem the mantle it held up to 2017 after the first huge scale solar farms in the nation's primary grid were activated.

Dixon notes that of the various solar farms presently moving through what has come to be a drawn out appointing process, the five most significant are all situated in NSW.

These consist of the 275MW Darlington Point, the 220MW Limondale 1, the 200MW Sunraysia, the 150MW Suntop and the 110MW Gunnedah solar farms. (All abilities in AC rather than DC).

Queensland, however, has some other major jobs incomplete, or about to start building, consisting of the 400MW Western Downs solar project from Neoen.

In the past month, according to Rystad, the five best carrying out solar farms were all located in Queensland, possibly not unexpected given the winter sun.

These were Adani's Rugby Run (28.2 per cent capability variable), Foresight's Oakey 2 (26.1%), Elliot's Childers (25.5%) as well as Susan River (25.4%) and also Genex' Kidston solar farm (24.4%).

2 of the leading 10 solar farms according to capability factor in August were in W.A., including the newly increased Greenough River (the first stage of which was the initial grid scale solar farm in Australia when constructed in 2012), and the Merredin solar farm.