Chinese PV module producer Risen Energy has started construction on the 121MW Yarranlea solar farm project, located 50 kilometres southwest of Toowoomba, in Australia's Queensland state.

The project, located across 250 hectares of land, is expected to be completed by March 2019.  Risen Energy will own and operate the completed facility, while also providing EPC services and the delivery of modules.

Once finished, the Yarranlea installation will be connected to the grid under the management of the National Electricity Market and offer clean energy to Toowoomba and Darling Downs. It will provide an average annual power capacity estimated at 264GWh.

Zhong said: "We highly value joint development of the Yarranlea project with the Australian government. We are also proud of the fact that the Yarranlea project is our first large-scale EPC project in the country. The project has also received regulatory approval for the development of integrated energy storage. We have set up specific zones for energy storage onsite.

"In addition to Queensland, we are targeting other states across Australia, most notably Victoria, New South Wales and Western Australia. To facilitate development of the project, we have assigned experienced experts to analyse our ongoing projects, while preparing for development of additional power stations that we will own and operate ourselves. We plan to expand further in Australia over the next five years, with a capacity goal of 1GW."