Natural gas producer in Australia, Woodside Energy has proposed to build a solar power facility in Western Australia's Pilbara with a capacity up to 500 MW, combined with an energy storage component.
The capacity of the energy storage component was not specified in the project details uploaded by the state's Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) on its website on January 10, 2022. The EPA is seeking public comments on the proposed facility for 7 days.
The Woodside Solar Facility is proposed to be located in Maitland Strategic Industrial Area, south-west of Karratha. Woodside has specified that the proposal is only for the infrastructure associated with the generation and storage of electricity from solar PV.
The company had previously shared it plans to realize this capacity in phases, with initial generation capacity estimated to be up to 100 MW. Each 50 MW of solar PV generation capacity is expected to take up to 9 months of construction period. Woodside wants to start construction in 2022 and complete the project in 2023.
Management expects the operational life of each phase to be around 30 years.
Electricity generated will be supplied to customers connected to the transmission infrastructure of North West Interconnected System (NWIS), and may include its own Pluto LNG Facility and proposed Perdaman Urea Plant.
In 2018, Woodside admitted to maturing a concept to integrate industrial-scale solar energy with gas-fired generation for its Burrup Hub LNG operations. "Together these energy sources can provide flexible, dispatchable power generation, supporting the transition to a lower carbon future whilst reducing costs and maintaining reliability," stated the company back then.