Australia’s New South Wales (NSW) has opened its maiden tender round under NSW Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap, for Central West Orana Renewable Energy Zone (CWO REZ), as part of plans to roll out competitive tenders to be launched within next 10 years.

The competitive tender round is aimed at enabling the state to transition away from coal-fired generation.

“This is the first of a 10-year schedule of rolling tenders which will incentivize an expected $32 billion in private capital, and it represents an immense source of ongoing opportunities for investors and developers. We want to see projects brought to market and delivering electricity sooner,” said Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) Services’ Executive General Manager Paul Verschuer.

With an indicative size of 2,500 GWh of annual generation and 600 MW of long duration storage, the tender is open to projects across NSW that seek to connect to existing transmission and distribution infrastructure in a declared REZ that do not yet have an access scheme. The actual selected capacity can increase or decrease if AEMO deems it fit.

NSW aims to develop 5 REZs, starting with pilot CWO REZ that attracted 27 GW of renewable energy offers against 3 GW offered under registration of interest round (REZ) (see NSW Receives 27 GW Interest For 3 GW REZ).

According to the government, more than 3.6 GW of energy investment has been committed or anticipated across NSW and it expects nearly all of these projects to be eligible to participate.

Last date to submit bids for this tender round is October 28, 2022. Responses received will be assessed and shortlisted companies will be invited to offer financial bids in mid-December 2022 which they can then submit till February 10, 2023. Final winners will be announced in April 2023, as per the tender timeline. Further details of the tender documents, available as a tender pack, is available on AEMO Services website.

“The Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap is the largest program of its kind ever implemented in NSW. It will generate considerable economic opportunities for workers, in local industry and across our supply chains,” added Verschuer. “In the space of a decade we’ll create a new electricity network, based on renewables, that is cheaper, greener and more reliable than our current system.”

Apart from CWO REZ, NSW has 4 other REZs planned namely New England, South-West, Hunter-Central Coast and Illawarra, all of whom have received enormous response from the industry (see Illawarra REZ Receives 17 GW Worth Project Proposals).