Samsung C&T proposes 300-MW Queensland solar with co-located battery project

• Samsung C&T Renewable Energy Australia has lodged plans for a 300-MW solar park with a co-located battery in Queensland under EPBC review.

Samsung C&T Renewable Energy Australia has filed its 300-MW solar-plus-storage proposal in Queensland for assessment under the national Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, setting a clear regulatory path for one of the state’s larger hybrid builds. The concept is straight out of the modern Australian playbook: large daytime generation paired with a multi-hour battery to deliver firm evening capacity, reduce curtailment, and provide fast grid-support services.

The planned layout would combine high-efficiency modules on single-axis trackers with a containerized battery energy storage system (BESS). Co-location keeps losses down, shares an interconnection, and allows a unified plant controller to respond to market signals—charging at low-price periods, discharging during the evening ramp, and delivering frequency and voltage support within seconds. With the National Electricity Market increasingly shaped by solar at noon and tightness after sunset, such hybrids are becoming the default design rather than the exception.

EPBC referral triggers a focused environmental lens: threatened species surveys, habitat corridors, and construction-phase controls for dust, noise, and storm-water. In Queensland, biodiversity and cultural-heritage management plans are now standard, as are visual-impact mitigations and traffic strategies to protect nearby communities during build. Early engagement with the transmission provider remains pivotal, particularly to sequence substation works and lock scarce transformers and grid-forming inverter packages.

Commercially, the project profile aligns with corporate offtake trends and potential participation in capacity and ancillary markets. Standardized equipment and repeatable EPC processes should help compress timelines and smooth costs despite global supply variability. If approvals land cleanly, Samsung C&T can phase construction to bring partial capacity online early, then scale the BESS to match evolving market revenue opportunities.

For Queensland, every grid-ready hybrid adds resilience: fewer price spikes, better use of plentiful midday solar, and reduced reliance on peakers. The submission under the EPBC framework is a concrete first step toward turning a blueprint into flexible, dispatchable clean megawatts.