As noted in other articles, I’ve been away for a while during January and February … and otherwise focused when back at work.  So, still catching up.

This article references two separate threads:

• I did see the announcements on 23rd February 2026 that Aula Energy had acquired the Larger Solar Farm portfolio from Lightsource BP
• that was just under 4 weeks after we released the GSD2025, on 28th January 2026.

… and, driven by curiosity, takes a first step in tying those two discrete threads together (taking a look at the GSD2025 to see what are these 5 operational assets that Aula Energy bought).

Some background to the sale

We noticed that Aula Energy made this announcement on LinkedIn at the time:

… with the key points (at least with respect to this article) being:

‘These assets comprise the five operating solar farms of West Wyalong, Wunghnu, Woolooga, Wellington and Wellington North and their associated BESS development opportunities. The acquisition establishes our first operating fleet across the National Electricity Market.’

Also on social media, the mothership (Macquarie Bank) also noted this on Linkedin.

Additionally, we saw ‘Lightsource bp accelerates APAC hybrid strategy with sale of selected portfolio to Aula Energy’ by Lightsource BP on 22nd February 2026.

(A)  Media references

For completeness we’ll note that we saw media coverage in the following articles:

1)  PV Magazine was the first we saw, with ‘Lightsource bp finds buyer for 1 GW solar portfolio’ by David Carroll on 23rd February 2026.

2)  RenewEconomy also noted this development in ‘Investment giant snaps up 1 GW solar and battery portfolio of retreating oil supermajor’ by Sophie Vorrath.

(B)  The earlier attempt at sale

Also for completeness it’s worth remembering that there was an earlier sale announced :

1)  this was announced in December 2023:

(a)  by Lightsource BP in ‘Lightsource bp recycles capital to accelerate renewable asset growth in the APAC region’ on 14th December 2023; and

(b)  by BJEI in ‘Beijing Energy Group Takes Australian Renewable Portfolio Past 2GW With Acquisition of Lightsource Bp Assets’

2)  But some will remember that this transaction was knocked on the head by the FIRB (Foreign Investment Review Board).

… this was noted on 9th February 2025 by Street Talk ‘FIRB delays kill Lightsource BP’s $800m-plus solar farm sale’ in the AFR.

So it was back into the sale process for Lightsource BP, which took another ~26 months (from the date the BJEI successful bid was announced) to confirm the new buyer in Aula Energy.

1)  I’m curious if there is information in the public domain about how the sale prices of (what I presume is) the same bundle of assets changed in the intervening period.

… noting that the AFR article referenced above had noted:

‘This year it’s Beijing Energy International Australia’s turn as its $813 million bid to acquire a collection of solar farms in NSW and Queensland falls over.’

2)  Can any reader shed any light?

The portfolio of operational assets, in the GSD2025

This sale was an opportunity to reach for the recently released GSD2025) to take a quick look at the 5 operational assets that were part of the bundle  … we’ll walk through each in turn to include some separate snippets from the GSD2025.

(A)  Operational Assets in NSW

Three of the 5 x operational assets were in NSW … in no particular order these are:

Asset #1)  the 200 MW Wellington Solar Farm

In Dan’s note here about the release, he wrote about some of the enhancements made in the upgrade to the GSD2025 …

Readers should remember to right-click on any image for a larger-resolution view.

… so I was keen to take the new additions for the Semi-Scheduled units ‘for a spin’ with this sale, and have highlighted two things here:

1)  First thing that jumped out at me in these side-by-side charts was the significant oversizing of panels compared to inverter rating that is visible in the large ratio of Registered Capacity to Maximum Capacity:

(a)  Some readers might recall my earlier article ‘Analytical Challenge – choosing what measure to use, for ‘Installed Capacity’’ that explains in some detail.

(b)  Which explains the ‘blocky’ type of time-of-day availability profile for this particular Solar Farm.

2)  We can also see (due tot he similarity in the two charts) that there was not much curtailment for this station through 2025

… compare this to other units below.

Asset #2)  the 400 MW Wellington North Solar Farm

Here’s some quick notes about WELNSF1:

Two quick points:

1)  Amongst the things that jumped out to me in a quick scan of the GSD2025 was that this unit had the commenced the process of deploying self-forecast onto its Availability feed at the end of 2025, as we see above

2)  Whilst we can never know any participant’s motivations, I’m wondering if the level of expense in Regulation FCAS and (from June 2026) PFR cost attribution was a factor:

Using ‘simple’ maths with the ‘totals’ column above we see cost outlay in excess of 2% of spot revenue for the whole year … and obviously it would be higher on a true annualised basis given that cost recovery for PFR only commenced with the advent of FPP on 8th June 2025.

Asset #3)  the 107 MW West Wyalong solar farm

There’s a number of things that jump out to me about WSTWYSF1, including the four highlighted here:

We see that:

1)  The unit has been operational for over 3 years (as at 31st December 2025, the end-date for data capture in the GSD2025)

… and during this time it’s changed its approach to bidding a number of times.

2)  We see that network curtailment is significant for this Solar Farm

3)  With the ‘N>NIL_9R6_991’ constraint equation (a ‘System Normal’ constraint) most commonly affecting the unit.

4)  There’s also a curiosity in that, through 2025, there were quite a few periods where the unit was offline for days at a time.

(B)  Operational Assets in QLD

There’s one operational asset in QLD

Asset #4)  the 210 MW Woolooga Solar Farm

I’ve highlighted two things here:

We see that:

1)  The unit has a ratio of Registered Capacity to Maximum Capacity of 126%

(a)  See where this stands in terms of the overall trend for this ratio for solar farms here, by date of first operations.

(b)  Despite this oversizing, we see that the seasonality of the solar profile means that the unit does not see peak availability through more than 4 months of the year.

2)  With reference to the annual aggregate availability figures for the unit through 2025, we see that this amounts to:

(a)  25.5% energy-constrained availability; and

(b)  92% utilisation of that availability.

(C)  Operational Assets in VIC

The 5th asset is in Victoria …

Asset #5)  the 90 MW Wunghnu Solar Farm

In contrast to the Wellington Solar Farm in NSW (above) we can clearly see in the similar comparison between Availability and Output by time-of-day in each month that this Solar Farm has been significantly affected by curtailment:

At the time of the sale announcement, we saw that Gero Farruggio had asked the question ‘has Aula picked the peak of curtailment?’ in his LinkedIn update here.

So let’s add in some more data with a quick reference to the ‘A’ Page and ‘B’ Pages in the GSD2025

To avoid distractions, I’ve removed more than half the content on these two pages – with this focused view, we can surmise that:

1)  though the generator presumably does not like the lower capacity factors experienced at asset;

2)  by bidding ‘negative LGC’ (or thereabouts) and with the pattern of negative prices in Victoria through 2025:

(a)  we see that ‘Economic Curtailment’ (or ‘Economic Offloading’) was the main factor her,

(b)  and that it was almost guaranteed to happen.

3)  What’s also notable is that, because the plant did not fully operate in the early months of 2025, it may well have been that curtailment might have been worse over the whole year if it had.

4)  Following the change in ownership, we might keep an eye out to see if there is a change it would seem likely that Aula Energy would be definitely hoping that this would be the case!

(a)  In ez2view in the shorter term;

(b)  But also in ~11 months time in the next annual update to the Generator Statistical Digest.

Access your own copy of the GSD2025

For those who have purchased access (it’s an organisation-wide licence to access – the PDF, or potentially with the Data Extract as well), you can download this at this address:

https://downloads.wattclarity.com.au/

If your organisation has not yet purchased access, you can do this here:

• GSD2025 (PDF Report Only) = $950 exGST
• GSD2025 (PDF Report with Data Extract) = $3,950 exGST