It's a decent arrangement. As suspected, it's back ended to reduce the cash flows today but increase the development cost tomorrow. I don't disagree with this approach. The numbers I am looking at:
- $5m over the next 12 months, which essentially will be paid for from the higher-than-average NEM prices on existing solar farms. So that should not impinge Genex's cash flow. Pretty small outlay to be honest.
- $20m for the Bulli Creek 400MW/1600MWh battery. That's quite substantial, but in reality it only adds a small percentage to the overall build cost of Bulli Creek. Using the Bouldercombe battery (50MW/100MWh) costs of ~$60m, then you would expect a similar BESS battery would be around $480m. Add in the $20m / 5%, and you get it to $500m total cost.
- ~$20m for Bulli Creek ~675MW solar farm. This obviously would occur later, and may be scaled up/down based on the economics of the project. Again, as a percentage of the cost of a solar farm it's quite small. I don't think Kidston Solar (50MW) is a great comparison, but that was $115m. So that means a total cost of around $1.5bn. But costs of construction have come down, and the site is different. Average price today is closer to $1.39/watt according to ARENA, which would be a total build cost around $938m.
I mentioned earlier, that I thought this would add around $600m to the enterprise value of Genex based on the pipeline - but we would need that to progress through the development stages prior to being realised.
Interestingly, Angus Gemmell who runs Solar Choice has a long history of succesful solar farm developments. It's unclear how much of the development process has already been conducted. But, good pedigree for turning these things into reality. This is an excerpt from the website:
Since 2012 Angus has pioneered the development of many of Australia’s largest solar farms, and some of the largest globally. These include securing land exclusivity, funding the planning approvals, closing pre-construction conditions and bringing a key partner on board for each of the co-located Whitsunday Solar Farm, Hamilton Solar Farm, Daydream Solar Farm and Hayman Solar Farms which all moved into construction on a single cattle station near Collinsville in North Queensland in 2017 for a total size of 380MW DC. Combined these projects form the largest solar array in the southern hemisphere. Additionally, Angus was the originating developer for Victoria’s first large-scale solar project to move into construction, the 60MW DC Gannawarra Solar Farm near Kerang/Swan Hill. He also led the development of the Mount Majura Solar Farm (ACT, 2016) plus sourced the site and co-negotiated land agreements for the 275MW Darlington Point Solar Farm (NSW, commenced operations in 2020).
Angus’ biggest project, in which he has extensively worked and invested for nearly a decade since originating it in 2013, is the giant multi stage 2,000MW+ Bulli Creek Solar Farm and Energy Storage development west of Toowoomba in Queensland located across 13,000 acres close to one of the strongest points of Australia’s transmission network. The Bulli Creek project has cleared numerous development milestones for construction readiness.
