MPower Completes Faraday Solar Energy Project Acquisition

It’s been a while and there’s nothing to see yet, but work on Sydney-headquartered MPower’s Faraday Renewable Energy Project in Victoria should start soon.

MPower specializes in the development, construction and operation of renewable energy plants and has a preference for small solar parks. The Faraday Renewable Energy Project is a now shovel-ready 5 MW solar power plant project to be constructed near the town of Faraday, Victoria, approximately 116 kilometers from Melbourne. It will cover an area of 14 hectares and will include 11,000 bifacial solar panels.

Bifacial modules are able to harvest light from both the back of the panel and the front. This isn’t a great feature for home solar systems, where the modules are generally installed flush with the roof, but can be particularly useful in projects where the modules are raised at an angle from the surface they’re mounted on become – e.g. B. in open space solar parks.

Bifacial solar panels have the potential to generate significantly more energy compared to monofacial panels. As with monofacial modules, this depends on factors such as the angle/tilt and orientation/direction of the panels, but also the reflectivity of the floor surface.

Faraday is expected to generate more than 11,500 MWh annually.

As early as November 2021, MPower announced that it had signed a binding purchase agreement for Faraday. All good things take time, as we all know, but now the company has all the necessary development permits – which is what the original purchase agreement was. With all the boxes ticked, the company announced yesterday that it has completed the acquisition of the Faraday Renewable Energy Project.

Construction was previously scheduled to begin in 2022, but it looks like 2023 will be the year Faraday will transition from shovel to shovel into the ground.

Everything seems Tickety-BOO at MPower

MPower CEO Nathan Wise said the Faraday project is consistent with the company’s Build Own Operate (BOO) strategy, which envisages a network of 5MW projects being built in regional areas of high demand.

“We are very encouraged by the corporate and operational advances we have made over the past few months and look forward to providing more meaningful updates to both Faraday and our broader portfolio strategy in the current quarter,” he said.

MPower has a portfolio of more than 10 project sites in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia – both own projects and projects carried out for others.

Another recent acquisition by MPower is the Lakeland solar and storage project in Cooktown Shire, North Queensland. It has been in operation since 2017 and includes a 10.8 MWac solar farm and a 1.4 MW/5.3 MWh lithium-ion battery storage system. A long-term power purchase agreement (PPA) is in place with Origin Energy for 100% of Lakeland’s solar power output.

The existing Lakeland revenues made the project particularly attractive to MPower, but cost savings opportunities were also identified through infrastructure upgrades and the implementation of the company’s proprietary remote monitoring and control technology, which will also be used at Faraday. Those opportunities were seized, and last November the company said it had cut more than $500,000 in annual costs. Considering the small size of the project, this is quite a big change.

In addition to solar/battery projects, MPower supplies hybrid power and backup systems, as well as asset management and preventative maintenance for corporate and government customers.