The co-founder of New Zealand's largest solar farm development portfolio says the Fast Track Approvals Bill will be key to accelerating the consenting processes for major energy projects.
Far North Solar Farm, which began in 2019, manages a portfolio of 11 solar farm developments across the North and South Islands, valued at approximately $2 billion. The company is also supported by Aquila Group, a global specialist climate investment fund with assets totaling €14 billion.
Richard Homewood is co-founder and director at Far North Solar Farm and wants all of the firm’s projects to have construction consent approval by the end of the year.
“For three quarters of our portfolio, we are going through the normal pathway because they’re medium sized projects and it's easier, I suppose. Nothing changes about our projects whether we're doing fast track or not fast track,” he told interest.co.nz.
“It's exactly the same in terms of the standards and what we do. I think if the Fast Track [Approvals Bill] is not brought into place, then we might get to 60% of that goal. So it has a material impact.”
The business is working towards having its entire portfolio completed by 2028. If it gets the consenting approval it needs, Far North Solar Farm plans to have three quarters of its portfolio in construction before the end of 2025.
Once all the solar farms are fully operational, Homewood says the portfolio will be generating 1.5 gigawatts of solar power per year – the equivalent to about 15% of New Zealand’s peak energy demand today.
Homewood was at a Financial Council Services event on Wednesday where Climate Change Minister Simon Watts gave a keynote on the Government’s strategies to combat climate change. Investing in energy is high up on his list.
New Zealand currently produces around eight gigawatts of electricity energy from geothermal power per year and the Government wants to push that up to 16 gigawatts in the next 25 years.
Watts described it as a “pretty significant” commitment.
“But we believe it is possible and that will put us in a competitive advantage over many other countries because of the abundance of energy. Energy powers our economy, and that will give us options.”
The consenting processes for these big energy projects will be much quicker under the Government’s controversial Fast Track Approvals Bill. Introduced as part of the Government's 100-day plan, the Bill gives the Ministers of Infrastructure, Regional Development, and Transport the power to fast-track projects by referring them to an expert panel.
This panel then has up to six months to review and apply conditions, after which the projects return to the ministers – who will then further consider it and have final approval.
Watts said on Wednesday that the Bill took into account the challenges of “how long it takes to get stuff done in this country”.
“We really need to double down and accelerate the speed at which we're putting in renewables into New Zealand to enable [us] to support our economy. And obviously those renewable energy aspects will also lead through to reducing high emission fuels.”
Homewood said after Watts’ speech that he was pleased with what the Minister had to say and the Government had given some “good signals”.
“There's so many stages to the life cycle of these projects, and there's a big focus on consenting, but it's not just consenting. You've also got to build the grid infrastructure. You've got to bring the capital in,” he said.
“There's so many stages, but unless you get certainty around the consenting aspect, then everything else is delayed and there’ll be lots of projects that get consented that will never get built.”
Watts said private capital and investment would play a “critical role” in the way in which the Government was going to achieve its climate targets.
Homewood told interest.co.nz that if the Government wants to double its renewable energy capacity, the scale of investment required will be in the tens of billions.
“It's absolutely enormous. And so we simply cannot get there without the involvement of international capital,” he said. “There's a lot to be learned from the international market in this space because renewables in New Zealand is so new.”
41 Comments
kwbrn,
My younger son lives in a very nice part of Auckland and a couple of years ago, Kainga Ora decided to do just that. A local RE agent tried to drum up a local opposition to it in a highly racist way and my son, bless him, reported him to the CEO of the company. As it happens, no development has taken place.
This is all great but until there is money spent on energy storage capacity ie huge battery banks, i cant see how solar can provide the additional power when increased demand on cold evenings/overnight/early morning or am i missing something. Is there a second stage to these solar developments? Ive read that in Aussie there is now to much solar energy thats not used when available during the day time due to the huge increase of domestic solar panels and this is a potential cost to homeowners. "The AER’s five-year rolling regulatory pricing updates meant three NSW-based energy firms – Ausgrid, Endeavour and Essential – were told in April they could impose a fee on households exporting surplus power during the period of the day that is sunniest when the spot power prices are often negative.The Australian Energy Regulator said the electricity network “was not designed for large amounts of energy flowing back into the network”.“This two-way flow of energy, with peaks in supply during the middle of the day, is overloading the network in many areas,it said"
NZ has hardly any solar at the moment, so it's not really an issue at the moment. Most electricity usage is during the day, so it is helpful, which is why you can get electricity plans with low rates overnight.
It doesn't solve that cold evening peak issue, but not every development needs to do that. Maybe it can mean we can keep more water in the lakes to help in dry years.
This was such an interesting development right? I suspect the only logical outcome will be the emergence of local grids with shared storage and metering. This would be a great business to start…although the regulations against the backdrop of what will be hectic lobbying would be frustrating.
Grid operators, like all glacial businesses, will lose share and become less and less relevant.
Solar is kind of cool on a small scale to play with. just got a 50W panel and its on a Tracer MPPT controller to a standard car battery and its job now is to run some outdoor LED security lights. 14W total of LED lights are pretty impressive on the area they can light up these days. Shame about the weather, the daily recharge is not going well.
China. Mine was pretty cheap. The controller is also made in China. Pretty good quality for my application its been running for about 5 years now doing various things. Sure its great in the summer but the winters here with the weeks on end of grey skies are totally hopeless. The MPPT controller maximises the output to charge the battery but it drops to a few Watts of output in the current weather. Solar is simply not a reliable source of power, you have to totally overspec it to get you through the bad weather.
So this govt is achieving what it wants and says it's going to do. Not like the last lit who would still be booking another coffee meeting to discuss how it might affect one person so the project has to be put off till the next coffee meeting. Of course they would all have the nice new hard hat and hi-viz on
Dream on, all these projects did the design, geotech and grid connection applications years ago. The Nats wouldn’t have a clue how solar works yet all they need to do is look over the Tasman to see a true energy transformation taking place, in many states incentivised and planned by government.
Disagree, and as per someone else post - Australia has big problems with managing renewable loads and it's killing the profitability of big base load generators so there's a shortage of capacity when its cloudy and there's no wind. They have real risks of black outs. Subsidisation has actually been a big problem, particularly in Queensland roof top solar.
First Geothermal,at present in delivery (and due for completion by Q4 25) we have Geothermal generation in delivery that will uplift ttl generation by 35%,In addition we have consented projects awaiting FID for a further 15% so the so called doubling is well underway.
Second FNSF are using MWp which overstates their expected generation capability.
Comparative analysis sees around 550 MW of NZ installed solar before they complete their first farm ( NZ will generate around 750GWh of solar in 2025) the smaller scale projects in delivery in NZ with tactical placement nearer load have significant efficiency gains.
That includes all connected solar ( rooftop inc industrial) has lower line losses as first used behind meter then supplying to nearest demand.The larger solar arrays (>10MW) are required to participate on the trading market with expected capacity by Jan 25 to be around 140MW.
Still pretty expensive to go totally off grid and not to have to worry about what you have turned on and for how long. It would help if electricity providers didn't rip you off for your excess generation fed back into the grid during the summer. Weather just not good enough here but for an island in Fiji its a no brainer over a diesel generator these days.
some more background. About 18months old. Early stages of the project where about zero of the Pukenui site had started solar development.
https://businessdesk.co.nz/article/energy/far-north-solar-farm-a-dead-d…
Interesting. They could put a 3rd of the panels in to cover local demand. Seems like a battery or pumped storage system would be an ideal complement , bearing in mind the line south is a constraint on any large development in the area anyway. Has the large wood processing mill closed?
“It's absolutely enormous. And so we simply cannot get there without the involvement of international capital,” he said.". I see some more future problems with our current account deficit.
Apart from that, massive implementation of wind and solar generation will also increase challenges with voltage and frequency stabilisation and managing peak loads which always happens when the sun is not shining. Or you connect big users like data centers and milk dryers directly with renewable generation.
Batteries would help with voltage and frequency stabilisation. but increasingly , electrical appliances can handle a wide range , given they are mostly pwm power supplies.
solar pv inverters are spot on in both , so i'm not sure how they would make the problem worse . ?
"It is shown that resilience exhibits daily oscillations as the grid’s effective structure and the power demand fluctuate. This can lead to a substantial decrease in grid resilience, explained by periods of highly clustered generator output. Moreover, the addition of batteries, while enabling consumer self-sufficiency, fails to ameliorate these problems."
From MBIE,
"Tēnā koutou katoa
This is a brief e-news to inform you that a large number of documents produced for the NZ Battery Project are now available on the webpage below.
A further bundle of documents is still being prepared for publishing and will also be added to this webpage in the coming months. We will issue a final NZ Battery Project E-news to let you know when these documents are available.
All information held by MBIE on the NZ Battery Project investigations will be retained in accordance with MBIE’s records management policy, as is consistent with the Public Records Act 2005.
MBIE stopped investigations into a pumped hydro scheme at Lake Onslow late last year. However our ongoing and wider electricity security work programme includes continuing to consider the question of security of supply and the need for long-duration energy storage.
Ngā mihi
Energy Markets branch
Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment"
We welcome your comments below. If you are not already registered, please register to comment.
Remember we welcome robust, respectful and insightful debate. We don't welcome abusive or defamatory comments and will de-register those repeatedly making such comments. Our current comment policy is here.