The Central-West Orana REZ is a key part of the NSW Government’s Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap (DPIE, 2020) and the associated Electricity Infrastructure Investment Act 2020 (NSW) (EII Act).
As part of the NSW Government’s plan, REZs will play a vital role in delivering affordable, reliable and renewable energy generation to help replace the State’s existing coal fired power stations as they come to the end of their scheduled operational life.
The Central West Orana region has been chosen to host the first coordinated REZ in Australia due to its proximity to the existing ‘backbone’ transmission network, its mix of energy resources, and significant investor interest.
ConnellGriffin was appointed to provide Transaction and Commercial advisory services to EnergyCo. The role includes leading the procurement process to appoint a private sector network operator to design, finance, build, operate and maintain network infrastructure for the Central-West Orana REZ. The new grid connections will include energy hubs and new high-capacity transmission lines. The services provided to date have included:
The ConnellGriffin team was able to successfully integrate into the EnergyCo project team and deliver the suite of RFP documents on schedule.
Our Advisors have been instrumental in understanding the dependencies between Network Operator (NO) procurement, NO environmental planning, Access Rights tender, Generator project development and commercial arrangements and adopting to the changes accordingly.
The ConnellGriffin CFG team is supporting the project in developing pragmatic solution for generators physical connections with consideration to technical, commercial, landholder and environmental planning constraints. The CFG team is also navigating the complex stakeholder interplay to reach outcomes between generators, EnergyCo team, councils and the Department of Planning and Environment on issues relating to Environmental Planning and Social License for the generators.
Setting up a cross discipline coordination working model to improve collaboration between the CFG process, project Social License initiatives, council discussions and EnergyCo policy development to develop solutions to multi-faceted problems and drive the actions to reach decisions.
This engagement process ensures that the new high voltage network that is developed is suitable for the generators and enables multiple generators to connect to the new network collectively.
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