Carnegie JV in $7m solar win

Carnegie Clean Energy’s joint venture with contractor Lendlease has won its second contract in a week, with the partnership to design, construct and operate a $7 million solar project in NSW.

The solar farm will have a five-megawatt capacity and will be built for the City of Newcastle.

The timeframe for the project is rapid, with commissioning expected to start as early as August and completion due in September.

Carnegie’s slice of the joint venture is held through Energy Made Clean, an engineering procurement and construction contractor it bought out in October 2016 for $13 million.

Last week, the partnership was awarded a $6.8 million contract to install and operate a renewable powered microgrid in Kalbarri, in Western Australia's Mid West.

That project was sponsored by the state government and included a 4.5MWh battery component.

Carnegie managing director Michael Ottaviano said the Newcastle project would be the company's first utility scale solar farm in NSW and would be the first connected to the National Electricity Market.

“This project brings the value of new contracted work for our joint venture to over $30 million over the past two months,” Dr Ottaviano said.

“The solar farm will be installed as a ground mounted fixed tilt system and utilising an optimised piling system to suit the site topology and allow simple future addition of a battery energy storage system.

“Design will commence immediately with commissioning expected end of quarter three, 2018.”

Shares in Carnegie were up 5.1 per cent to 4.1 cents each at the time of writing.