New data released by Australia’s Clean Energy Regulator (CER) has noted that 553MW of capacity was approved in the National Electricity Market (NEM) in April, the majority of which is made up of the 520MW Stubbo solar PV plant in New South Wales.
Whilst Acen Australia’s Stubbo solar PV plant makes up the majority of the approved capacity across April 2025, small-scale solar contributed to the 553MW figure, with the majority of these around the 0.2-0.5MW range.
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The Stubbo PV project is located in the Central-West Orana renewable energy zone (REZ), which recently set its sights on construction later this year and recently awarded 7.15GW of projects the right to connect.
The project approval contains provision for a 200MWh battery energy storage system, which Acen said will contribute to the area’s grid stability by storing and distributing renewable energy at peak times.
Other larger-scale solar PV plants that were approved in April include the Cubbie (3.6MW), Hendys Road Numurkah (6MW) and Moyhall (8MW) solar PV power plants situated in Queensland, Victoria and South Australia, respectively.
Alongside these approved projects, a single solar PV plant was financially committed to in April: Octopus Australia’s 80MW Fulham solar-plus-storage site in Victoria. The project includes plans for a co-located 64MW/128MWh DC-coupled utility-scale battery energy storage system (BESS).
In early May, PV Tech reported that Queensland housed the top five performing utility-scale solar PV power plants, in terms of AC capacity factor, in April 2025.
The top five performing assets were X-Elio’s 200MW Blue Grass solar PV plant, Greek industrial conglomerate Mytilineos’ 110MW Moura solar PV plant, Hana Financials’ 162MW Columboola PV plant, the 168MW Western Downs solar PV power plant and Eneos’ 204MW Edenvale solar PV plant.
PV Tech Premium also analysed the generation of utility-scale and rooftop solar PV in the NEM and Western Australia’s South West Interconnected System (SWIS) during April.
According to the data, which had been sourced from Open Electricity, formerly known as OpenNEM, solar generation in the NEM was up 13% year-on-year. Indeed, utility-scale and rooftop solar PV generation hit 3,440GWh in April, slightly lower than the 3,859GWh recorded in March 2025, a decrease of 419GWh month-on-month. This generation capacity supported the growing number of renewables in the electricity mix.
