This week we discuss GE Vernova's $600 million investment in its US facilities, ORIX selling its stake in Greenko to AM Green Power, and a 70 GW wind and solar project in Western Australia seeks federal approval.

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Welcome to Uptime News Flash. Industry news, lightning fast. Your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, and Phil Totaro, discuss the latest deals, mergers, and alliances that will shape the future of wind power. News Flash is brought to you by IntelStor. For market intelligence that generates revenue, visit www.intelstor.com.

Allen Hall: So this week, Phil, a number of really interesting moves in renewable energy. First off is the Western Green Energy Hub has submitted its proposal for federal environmental approval in Western Australia, someplace we're going to be pretty soon. The project plans to install 70 gigawatts of wind and solar capacity through 35 power nodes.

Now, each node will include 2 to 3 gigawatts of generation and about 1. 5 gigawatts of electrolyzer. Phil, Western Australia has a number of renewable projects planned. What makes this one unique? Well,

Phil Totaro: it's the first one. They're

Allen Hall: going to

Phil Totaro: do it. Yeah. Because of all these mega projects that have been proposed throughout Australia.

There's some in Queensland and South Australia, and I think one in Victoria as well. And what we're talking about is something that's like, 30, 40, 50, 60, in this case, 70 gigawatts worth of generation capacity. That's almost. I mean, 70 gigawatts is almost what the entire Australian grid produces on an annual basis.

So what they're doing with this is they're saying, all right, it's going to accommodate some, increased electricity demand. Although the, the amount that, that it's going to increase is, is modest compared to the, the amount they're going to be generating. But as you mentioned, they're going to add all these, um, Electrolyzer is to be able to produce hydrogen on a lot of these mega projects in Australia that have been proposed.

That's their intent is to, build these these things with, turbines that are going to be at least 10. Megawatts each, if not bigger. The reality with this is it is the first of these kind of mega projects to, to get into this environmental permitting and consent queue. And so this is the start of what could be, a pretty major undertaking.

Joel Saxum: Something to think about here too, is this is in Western Australia. So if you know anything about Western or if you know anything about Australia's grid, it's not very well connected East to West. And the major demand centers are all in the East. You have Perth in the West, of course, but that Western side of Australia, the grid doesn't need much energy to support it.

It doesn't have a whole lot of demand compared to the rest of the, or the, to the Eastern parts of the country. So at the end of the day, 70 gigawatts is great, but the This is going to be just a, not just, but for the most part, a green hydrogen project, right? They don't need 70 gigawatts of clean energy to fulfill the grid needs over there.

That doesn't demand that much. So most of this energy was used for hydrogen, green hydrogen creation. And that's one thing that Australia does really, really, really well. They have a lot of natural resources and they know how to export. So you, you look to see this project.