Industrial rooftops such as those that previous saw the production of Ford and General Motors Holden vehicles will soon become part of a network of rooftop solar farms and grid-scale batteries as part of a joint venture between Australia’s largest commercial and industrial real estate owner and a renewable energy company.
Ross Pelligra, chairman of the property giant Pelligra Group, said his organisation will give CEP Energy access to 10 million square metres of rooftop space it owns around the country, allowing the group to sell discounted energy directly to tenants engaged in power-hungry manufacturing processes, and to sell excess power to the grid.
Melbourne’s The Age newspaper reports Mr Pelligra said the scheme would help the group keep industrial tenants, some of whom have gone offshore over recent years due to concerns about the cost and reliability of energy in Australia.
Morris Iemma, the former New South Wales premier who is now CEP Energy chairman, said the larger sites owned by Pelligra were particularly well-suited to solar energy projects because they provide large amounts of space close to cities and industrial centres.
They do not need expensive grid connections to be built, as is often the case with renewable developments in regional areas.
Eventually rooftop solar could be deployed at thousands of sites around the country, but the first grid-scale sites to be developed include the former Ford plant in Geelong, Victoria, the General Motors Holden plant in Elizabeth, South Australia, and another undisclosed site in the Hunter Valley, NSW.
The Age reports within five years CEP Energy aims to build capacity to generate 1500 megawatts (MW) of power, with 1000 megawatts of battery storage, enough to power around 600,000 homes.
By comparison the ageing Liddell coal-fired power station in the Hunter Valley has a power capacity of 1680MW, while South Australia’s “big battery” has a capacity of 100MW.
According to Mr Iemma, while Australia leads the world in domestic rooftop solar, it lags in larger industrial and commercial arrays, in part because property management companies do not have the expertise or interest in using their roof space for renewables.
Because Pelligra owns so much property around the country, that disconnect has been overcome in this deal, he said.
CEP Energy also recently finalised a 30-year, $40 million rooftop power plant and onsite battery agreement with the Narellan Town Centre in Sydney’s south-west, which is jointly owned by the Vitocco and Perich families.
Mr Pelligra said the deal made commercial sense for the group, but was also in line with the family company’s outlook.
“One of the things the family has always believed in is that we need a safe, clean environment to continue as a company and as a community,” he said.
Chris McLean, a PwC partner who has provided advice to CEP Energy, said the project had benefits over other renewable and battery projects due to its scale and location.
“Its scale is comparable to, if not bigger than, traditional solar and wind farms, meaning its cost to produce and store renewable energy is relatively cheap. It is certainly cheaper than other rooftop businesses,” he said.
“The location of its assets means that it avoids the grid issues plaguing traditional solar and wind farms/utility scale solar and wind farms and it delivers energy efficiently, energy is being consumed where it has been generated.”
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