Australia’s Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) recently announced approval for an investment of up to AUD 45 million in Fortescue’s Solar Energy Innovation Centre located in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The project will involve the construction of a 500MW-scale testing platform and a 1.5GW photovoltaic development pipeline, aimed at reducing the levelized cost of electricity through technology validation.
The core objective of this testing platform is to address the high construction costs and logistical challenges in the Pilbara region, providing cost-reduction benchmarks for large-scale Australian solar projects, particularly in remote industrial settings. ARENA’s innovative funding model stands out—it supports up to 10 independent sub-projects involving different technologies under a single agreement, creating a testing ground for combined photovoltaic technology applications.
Fortescue has already launched two demonstration projects within the centre. Construction automation company Built Robotics has completed testing of automated pile-driving technology at the Cloudbreak solar farm, while modular solutions provider 5B plans to test its pre-assembled, pre-wired Maverick photovoltaic system on-site in early 2026. Successful technology validation is expected to lead to scaled-up applications.
This investment aligns closely with ARENA’s “Ultra Low-Cost Solar” (ULCS) initiative. The program has set clear targets for 2030: increasing module efficiency to 30%, reducing system installation costs to AUD 0.3 per watt, and pushing the levelized cost of electricity below AUD 20 per megawatt-hour. The long-term vision aims to achieve 1 terawatt of installed national photovoltaic capacity by 2050.
