New South Wales is set to receive new electricity grid infrastructure with a commitment from the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC).
The CEFC debt finance to New South Wales EnergyCo will underpin select expenditure related to the Central-West Orana Renewable Energy Zone (CWO-REZ), located in regional New South Wales.
The CWO-REZ is approximately 20,000 square kilometres, centred by Dubbo and Dunedoo.
The funding is provided via the CEFC’s Rewiring the Nation (RTN) Fund.
The innovative debt finance arrangement will underpin selected expenditure related to the CWO-REZ. This is expected to include land acquisition for transmission and the purchase of biodiversity offsets. New transmission infrastructure will enable generators (such as solar and wind farms) participating in the REZ to export an additional 4.5GW of electricity to the rest of the network.
The finance agreement is believed to have the potential to deliver up to $240 million in benefits to New South Wales electricity consumers in the form of lower project costs over the 20-year tenure of the loan.
RTN Fund investments are intended to reduce the funding costs of grid transformation and lower the associated cost to consumers.
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