Horsham Solar Farm

About OX2

Leading Swedish renewable developer OX2 has acquired ESCO Pacific. OX2 sees great potential in the Australian market for renewables and sees opportunities to expand the operations of ESCO Pacific. OX2 also plans to scale up operations through acquisitions in solar and energy storage and has the ambition to expand operations to onshore wind while exploring offshore wind and hydrogen. The ESCO Pacific name and logo will now be replaced with OX2. To view the relevant media release, please visit: https://www.ox2.com/australia/news

About the Project

OX2's Horsham Solar Farm is situated on 196 hectares of grazing and cropping lands, approximately 5 km east of Horsham in Victoria. The project will export a maximum of 118.8MWac power to the grid and comprise approximately 230,000 solar photovoltaic (PV) modules, installed on ground-mounted single axis horizontal tracking structures. Direct Current (DC) electricity generated by various groups of PV modules is combined and fed into solar inverters which invert DC electricity into Alternating Current (AC) electricity. This electricity will then fed into a 33kV reticulation system before being centrally dispatched to the electricity network via a newly built transformer substation connecting solar farm directly to the 220kV bus at existing Horsham Terminal Substation owned by the Ausnet.

The solar farm consists of the following major equipment:

• 220/33kV Main Transformer Substation
• 220kV underground cable between Solar Farm and Horsham Terminal Station
• Collection Station consisting of 33kV switchgear, Protection, metering, control and communication equipment
• AC and DC auxiliary power supply system, all mounted inside a prefabricated building
• PV modules
• Trackers
• Piles
• Combiner Boxes
• Power Conversion Units (PCUs) consisting of inverters, transformers and Ring Main Units, all mounted on a metal skid
• SCADA system
• Security System
• Meteorological Stations
• Operation & Maintenance buildings
• Perimeter fencing with CCTV cameras

All of the above equipment are connected together by AC, DC, Fibre Optic and other communication cables. These equipment and cables are installed by appropriately qualified civil, mechanical and electrical contractors.

Generally, OX2 will engage an experienced EPC contractor who will design and construct the entire solar farm on turnkey basis. While selection process for such an EPC contractor has already started, OX2 is working closely with ICN to identify local suppliers and contractors who are capable of supplying product and services to the main EPC contractor as a subcontractor during the engineering, procurement, construction, operation and maintenance phases of the Horsham Solar Farm.

Project Timing

The project is expected to go into construction during the second quarter of 2024.

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