The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena) said its A$92m ($71m) of grant awards across 12 projects would unlock A$1bn of commercial investment and propel the country to a large-scale solar base of 720MW (AC).

The project roster – released followed a competitive tendering round – includes major international developers such as France’s Neoen, Thailand's Ratch, Canadian Solar and Goldwind, the Chinese wind group which obtained support for a 20MW plant to be co-located with its 175MW wind farm of the same name in New South Wales.

The list also features the 110MW Darling Downs development by Origin Energy in the state of Queensland – the state that will host half of the projects in line for funding.

With its vast land tracts and good solar conditions, Australia is in theory one of the world's prime locations for large-scale PV, but has seen it grow at a slower pace than rooftop solar.

The largest plant in the country to date is the AGL-owned, First Solar-built 155MW Nyngan/Broken Hill development in New South Wales, which was also part-funded by Arena.

Arena CEO Ivor Frischknecht said: “Australia’s big solar revolution is tantalisingly close and, as more home-grown businesses step up to provide construction, engineering and financial services, this newest tranche of Arena-supported projects is well positioned to take the sector even closer to commerciality.”

Arena – whose own future is under a question mark as it faces potential government cuts that could end its ability to make large future grants – said it has set an “aggressive timetable to lock in financing, off take arrangements, connection agreements and required approvals” that could see all the plants built by the end of 2017.

The agency claimed its work with developers in Australia had helped to slash “the locally determined costs of developing and building plants by more than half”.

Arena expects several of the developers concerned to seek debt finance from the parallel solar support scheme run by the country's Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC).

Arena added: “When we announced the round in September last year we expected A$100m of grant funding would enable around 200MW of new projects. We’ve achieved more than double that through this round with A$92m funding supporting around 480MW in total.

“This competitive tender approach could be adopted to speed up the commercialisation of other renewable energy technologies such as battery storage, concentrating solar thermal and bioenergy.”

The Arena grants mark the latest stage in a slowly improving picture for renewables in Australia under the government of Malcolm Turnbull, who has proved less hostile to clean energy development than his ultra-sceptical predecessor Tony Abbott.

The sector has also benefited from the certainty provided by a re-fixing of Australia’s 2020 Renewable Energy Target (RET) at a level that enjoys bipartisan political support.

However, analysts have warned that the policy landscape remains far from ideal.

BMI Research said in August that renewables developers still face a “clouded regulatory framework” in Australia, which is making it increasingly tough to secure long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs), and consequently to finance projects.