New England Solar given permission from Australian Energy Market Operator AEMO to feed into the national electricity grid

New England Solar, located about 6km east of Uralla, shot its first five of 720 megawatts into the National Electricity Market NEM following Australian Energy Market Operator AEMO approval on Tuesday.

On completion, the 1.5 million solar panel project owned by Philippines-based ACEN Australia is expected to power-up about 250,000 NSW homes in 2024, with stage one delivering 400 megawatts by mid-2023.

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ACEN Australia CEO Anton Rohner said energy market approval for the project was an important milestone toward providing clean power for households in the region.

"It is an exciting time for our construction team and our contracting partners, who have worked very hard over the past two years to install, build, and connect the solar project," Mr Rohner said in a statement.

New England Solar was approved for construction by the state government in 2020 after revising its 2019-released Environmental Impact Statement EIS.

Corinne Annetts from Sunhill Dairy Goats said even though she and other locals had discussions with developers, which resulted in the rollback of some of the project in 2019, she is concerned about ACEN's future plans.

"We had conversations with them which was fantastic when they put their EIS out [in 2019], and they did amend and make changes for their initial stage one," Ms Annetts said.

"But as to what the future of it may look like, it is still very much up in the air."

The Uralla-based local said the solar panel project, then-owned by UPC Renewables which is now fully owned by ACEN, "voiced they would be looking at it [the development sites] in the future".

ACM contacted ACEN, who said they are focused on drawing their planned 720 megawatts of power from the northern and central arrays, which is located east and north of Uralla.

"We had the southern array dropped from the project and we just concentrated on the northern and central arrays," ACEN spokesperson Michael Connarty said.

"So that's been a good compromise and a good outcome for both us and the community."

Mr Connarty said any plans for ACEN to build solar panels onto land in the southern array would mean developers keeping "in touch with the community to get the right outcome".

He said if they want to expand their solar panel site they would need to go through a multitude of stages, including engaging with locals, landholders and other stakeholders via another EIS to get approval.

About 80 per cent of ACEN's 400 workers have been sourced from local talent, including those upgrading and maintaining roads, installing and building supporting infrastructure and constructing and connecting tracking systems and solar modules.

"They have safely completed their work in very challenging circumstances including extreme wet weather and rain events, the impact of COVID and supply chain interruptions," an ACEN spokesperson said in a statement.

The New England Solar project forms part of the New England Renewable Energy Zone REZ and is expected to provide NSW with 8000 megawatts of power to homes.

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