Federal energy minister Chris Bowen has launched the latest tender under his flagship Capacity Investment Scheme, seeking another 1.8 megawatt of new wind and solar capacity for a state determined to close the last of its coal fired generators in three years time.
Labor’s CIS has struggled to gain traction in the country’s main grid because of the lack of contracts being written for large scale renewables, particularly wind, although it can claim to some success with the more easily deployed standalone batteries and solar and battery hybrids.
Western Australian is perhaps the one state where the CIS scheme is working well, at least for large scale wind, largely because of the additional long term off-take agreements being written by the state-owned utility Synergy.
The state is now in a rush to ensure enough new capacity to replace the last of the state owned coal generators that are due to shut by the end of 2029 and has recently announced PPAs with four major wind projects totalling more than one gigawatt of capacity.
The new tender comes just a few months after the results of the last generation tender in W.A. was revealed, with the winners including six wind projects and one solar and battery hybrid that totalled 1.886 gigawatts of capacity
