The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has announced that it has approved up to A$45 million in funding for Australian iron ore miner Fortescue Metals Group’s new solar innovation hub in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
The hub will act as a 500 MW test bed within Fortescue’s 1.5 GW solar PV development pipeline, designed to lower the levelized cost of utility-scale solar power and enable faster deployment across Australia’s renewable-energy landscape. It will use a new funding model that supports up to ten separate projects under a single agreement. These projects will test a range of emerging solar technologies with the goals of cutting costs, demonstrating technical and commercial feasibility and facilitating knowledge sharing.
Advancing cost-effective solar for industrial decarbonisation
Fortescue has already launched two initial demonstration projects under the program. The first conducted in collaboration with Built Robotics successfully trialed automated pile-driving technology at the Cloudbreak solar farm, showing efficiency gains in large-scale solar construction. The second one with 5B Maverick will test rapid-deployment modular solar systems from early 2026, also at Cloudbreak, with potential to be scaled across future project phases.
The solar innovation hub is expected to generate detailed insights into cost drivers, validate new technologies, and identify pathways to commercialization.