ARENA-funded project to accelerate Australian manufacturing
Overview
5B was awarded the first Australian Government Solar Sunshot grant. With the support of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), this Project will see 5B scale its Australian manufacturing capacity and accelerate automation of its pre-fabricated, rapidly deployed, energy dense Maverick solar technology.
Need
In 2025, more than 3 GW of utility and commercial and industrial capacity is expected to be added to the Australian market. Proposals are increasingly being put forward for multi-hundred megawatt and gigawatt-scale projects. Australia, however, also has unique characteristics that require solutions with specific technological attributes. For example, energy-intensive industrial users in the Pilbara (Western Australia) are decarbonising their operations in an area with abundant sunshine, cyclonic winds, highly corrosive zones, and labour constraints.
Addressing the solar opportunity in Australia with the incumbent supply chain carries risk: imported technologies are costly, inefficiently deployed, and not designed for Australian conditions. There is a growing need for large-scale solar solutions that are lower cost, and that use land and labour more efficiently.
The 5B Maverick is a pre-fabricated east-west solar array for utility-scale solar farms, designed and manufactured in Australia. Unlike other technologies, it is built in a factory and deployed – rather than assembled – on-site, requiring ~30% of the on-site labour resources of single-axis tracker (SAT) mechanical installation.1
Action
This Project will enable 5B to build and run production Australian capacity for the large-scale solar market; and further develop the Maverick Solution to continue to reduce the capital cost for an installed Maverick solar farm.
Outcome
5B aims to increase the volume of its Australian production capacity during the Project, as a precursor to advancing automation in the assembly and deployment of the 5B Maverick.
To serve the need for solar projects that are increasingly at the multi-hundred megawatt and gigawatt-scale, 5B will demonstrate credibility through building and testing its production capability at an equivalent scale, which this funding supports.
1Labour efficiency gains relate to the work related to on-site mechanical installation of the array mounting system, its foundations, and string cabling. 5B’s productivity studies have been conducted in the Australian context, and will vary by region (including remoteness) and industry.