This article is the third in the series of articles collated here following the grassfire that temporarily suspended production at Wellington North Solar Farm on Saturday 6th December 2025.

In response to my second article, Richard Healey challenged me here that:

‘What the data shows, so far, is circa 10% reduction in peak output compared to the average for the previous week. Exactly in line with the fire involving a fraction over ten percent of the area covered by panels.

Monitoring for a longer period will give us a better picture but suggesting that there is no long term damage seems premature at least’

Thanks for that prompt, Richard!

A closer look…

Given the interest in what’s happened onsite (including in other articles below), I thought it would be useful to attach another snapshot of the ‘Unit Dashboard’ widget in ez2view:

• looking backwards 5 days and forwards 5 days
• with data to 08:10 (NEM time) on Tuesday 9th December 2025:

The numbering is meant to highlight a few different methods that one might use to assess ‘what percentage of capacity is back online’:

Method 1)  Output

What Richard’s done is looked at output, and compared to peak output over preceding days.  In this case:

(a)  Peak output today (thus far) and yesterday was 298MW … compared to prior peaks of 330MW

(b)  Which means 90.3% operational.

Method 2)  Comparing Availability

One might, alternatively, look at Availability of the unit to determine a similar measure.

Method 3)  Elements Available

But perhaps a more accurate method (though obscure) would be to look at what’s being reported from the unit’s SCADA system to the AEMO in the form of ELAV (i.e. Elements Available):

(a)  With respect to this data:

i.  it was only in August 2024 that the ‘AEMO commences publishing actual intermittent generators (SCADA) availability data to the EMMS Data Model’.  That article contains more details

ii.   but the data has been supplied by the units for much longer than that, as part of the derivation of a unit’s UIGF for Semi-Scheduled units.

(b)  In this case we see that:

i.  Prior to the fire, the ELAV was commonly sitting at 104 units

ii.  Immediately following the fire (late on Saturday 6th December 2025) the unit returned, but only with 68ELAV

iii.  Yesterday (Monday 8th December 2025) we see the unit was at 90 ELAV early in the morning but rose to 94 ELAV by the end of the daylight hours

iv.  Note that this data is only ‘next day public’, so we can’t currently see it for today

(c)  So using these numbers, we might conclude that the units availability is only 94/104 = 90.4% available.

Reporting elsewhere

Worth an updated look elsewhere as well.

From the generator?

No news release yet here from LightsourceBP, the generator.

In the media?

In the media we have seen a few articles, including the following:

1)   To follow the first article in the Australian on the weekend (which I noted in my first article), Perry Williams has written ‘Major NSW solar farm resumes operation after being hit by large grass fire’ on Monday 8th December 2025.

Interestingly this article says:

‘One of Australia’s biggest solar farms that was caught fire on Saturday amid thunderstorms and heatwave conditions across NSW, is back to operating at about 90 per cent capacity.’

… and (quoting a Lightsource BP spokesperson):

‘Assessments are ongoing, but damage is limited to the north-east corner of the site. At this stage, no damage is expected to major equipment. The site is currently operating at around 90 per cent capacity and is expected to be fully operational shortly.’

2)  On Sunday 7th December, Giles Parkinson wrote ‘Grass fire forces one of Australia’s biggest solar farms to shut down for a day, no word yet on cause’ in RenewEconomy

3)  On Monday 8th December, David Carrol wrote ‘Fire forces 400 MW solar farm offline’ in PV Magazine.

This article also noted:

‘The spokesperson said assessments are ongoing but pointed out that the damage is limited to the northeast corner of the 317 ha site.

“At this stage, no damage is expected to major equipment,” the spokesperson said, adding that “the site is currently operating at around 90% capacity and is expected to be fully operational shortly.”’

In social media?

Nothing particularly to note at this time.