What Could Be The World's Biggest Solar Farm Approved In Australia

Bulli Creek, just west of Brisbane in eastern Queensland, Australia, is an unassuming piece of land: flat, treeless, no nearby residents. When it’s used at all, it’s used as grazing land. And yet it could become the site of one of the most exciting pieces of sustainable technology in the world.

A regional planning board just approved the plan for what could become the world’s largest solar farm, capable of cranking out a fifth of the entire country’s sustainable energy goal. The goal is to produce 2 gigawatts of power, nearly four times more power than Topaz Solar Farm in California, currently the largest solar farm in the world.

Bulli Creek is perfect for the specific needs of a gigantic solar farm, says Angus Gemmell, head of Solar Choice, the company behind the Bulli Creek farm. It’s flat, unburdened by neighbors, trees, or occasional use from farmers, it gets near-constant clear strong sunlight in the daytime, and it also happens to be right near a substation powerful enough to insert the farm’s power into the national energy grid. “There’s a surprisingly small number of sites (in Australia) that have everything all aligning at once,” Gemmell told The Guardian.

Creating solar farms this large isn’t just for bragging rights. Given the small number of ideal sites, it makes sense to take advantage of the ones there are, but there’s a larger cost-based reason. Nearly the entire cost of running a solar farm, compared with, say, coal or natural gas, is in construction; maintenance is minimal, and the sun keeps shining (as opposed to coal, which has to be dug continually). Setting up a solar farm in bulk is like doing anything else in bulk: a way to minimize the up-front cost, which will drive the eventual cost-per-watt (really, cost per kilowatt) down. Within a decade, Gemmell thinks solar power could well be the cheapest form of energy available.

Read more about Bulli Creek over at The Guardian.

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