Solar farm and big battery approval times have blown out in Australia's largest electricity market and wind projects are still taking nearly 1400 days to be green-lit despite improvement.
The planning system remains a bottleneck for major renewables projects in NSW, which needs more grid-scale generation and storage so it can retire its ageing and emissions-intensive coal-fired power stations.
The average large scale solar project is now taking almost 1140 days to satisfy planning rules, a report from the Clean Energy Investor Group finds.
This was up from roughly 700 days when average approval time-frames were last calculated in 2023, and was more than three times Queensland's 355-day typical approval times.
Grid-scale battery projects are averaging 614 days before they exit the planning system.
