Australia is famous for its sunny days. The abundant sunshine has long been a magnet for tourists — and, in late 2018, they also caught the attention of Andrew Moles, director of PCL Construction’s solar and battery energy storage system (BESS) operations.

Political changes were hampering project approvals in North America, but Moles knew PCL could diversify its operations and bring its expertise to clients in other parts of the world. With vast expanses of rural land averaging nearly 3,000 hours of sunshine a year, conditions in Australia were ideal. The nation’s government was investing money to meet ambitious renewable energy targets. And, with so much interest in solar energy, the country had an abundance of talent.

Armed with knowledge gained from PCL’s only other Australian project to date — the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, completed in 2016 — Moles and his team delved into research and put together a proposal for a solar project in Australia.

“When that project was approved by the Board, that was the green light to go in Australia,” says Moles, now the vice-president and district manager for PCL Construction’s Solar Division (PCL Solar). “That’s when it became real.”

Fast forward just seven years, and PCL is now among the top solar contractors in Australia, completing more than AU$2.4 billion in solar and BESS engineering, procurement and construction work in the country and building projects with more than 2.2 gigawatts of capacity. The company is currently building two massive projects in New South Wales: Stubbo, a 400-megawatt project that can power 185,000 homes, and Maryvale, which has a capacity of 172 megawatts and store 344 megawatt-hours of energy in its battery systems.

The fact that so many Australian clients want to work with PCL on utility-scale solar and BESS projects is no surprise to Moles. His team’s research and preparation made it clear there was an opportunity to bring its industry-leading expertise to the country and provide unmatched value to prospective solar projects.

PCL is working with so many clients in Australia that its main office has relocated from the Sydney suburbs into the city proper, and an additional temporary office has opened in Brisbane, 900 kilometers to the north.

Brisbane is home to many trade partners, and several solar projects are proposed for the surrounding area, including Bulli Creek, a 775-megawatt build that’s the first stage of a proposed 2-gigawatt clean energy park. Once fully built, Bulli Creek would be Australia’s largest solar facility, encompassing 1.5 million photovoltaic panels.

For a while, Jack Somers was PCL’s only employee in Brisbane. Having joined the company in November 2023 as a senior engineering and commissioning manager, he found himself scouting potential office locations.

PCL’s Brisbane office establishes a base in the city where most project partners are located, including Network Service Providers (NSPs), installers and subcontractors. “It helps a lot to see a client face-to-face when they’re worried about something and to let them know we’re focused on it,” Somers says.

When connecting to Australian power grids, PCL deals with two key bodies: local NSPs that maintain the infrastructure that delivers electricity to homes, and the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), the national organization that oversees the operation and security of Australia’s electricity and natural gas systems.

Both the NSPs and the AEMO are “intertwined with everything we do,” Somers says. Building relationships with them — on behalf of both PCL and clients — and proving projects won’t negatively affect the power grid has been key to PCL’s growth. “When NSPs see PCL is working on a project, they don’t have to worry; they know we’ve got it covered,” Somers says.

Just as important to PCL’s successful projects are strong relationships with trade partners, suppliers and subcontractors, which are due in large part to the efforts of Moles and country manager Gopinath Govindraj and result in positive word-of-mouth spreading among subcontractors and potential clients.

“The key folks at all the different companies we work with, they all know each other,” says Eric Morell, pre-construction and construction risk manager. “If we don’t treat people fairly, you won’t survive in this market.”

In its short time in Australia, PCL has established itself as an employer of choice. The company now employs nearly 60 people across the country — a mix of local hires and people who have relocated from North America.

Rishi Pant, PCL’s operations and maintenance manager, had worked with other Australian renewable energy companies before joining PCL in February 2023. He says that, in the relatively small sector, there are always rumblings when a new contractor comes in. But PCL quickly became a company people wanted to work with — and for.

“What makes PCL different is how we work with the owners and partners,” he says. “We discuss issues up front and escalate them if they can’t be solved at site level.”

Those who relocated from North America, meanwhile, knew before they made the move that PCL was establishing a solid foundation in Australia by building relationships with clients, trade partners, engineers and other stakeholders.

After joining PCL in November 2019, project manager Dillon Houston worked on Australian projects from PCL’s Toronto office — a 14-hour time difference — while Australia slept. In early 2024, he permanently relocated, gaining a front-row seat for PCL’s design, engineering and construction work. “I feel very privileged and lucky to have been part of it over the last year and a half. It’s been pretty special,” he says. “We’ve showcased ourselves as a premier company that can manage large-scale solar projects for our clients.”

While solar project construction is important, PCL Solar also excels at the operations and maintenance (O&M) work that comes afterwards. Once a project is handed over to the client, builders enter the Defect Liability Period, in which they take care of the project for two years.

That’s where Pant and his team come in. They support commissioning activities, conduct tests, analyze data and perform maintenance on the project for those two years, making sure what’s being delivered is what was promised. They bridge knowledge gaps between the PCL and the client, ensuring the project’s viability and profitability for decades to come.

“If there’s an issue, we’ll take care of it,” he says. “If we don’t know what happened, we can go back to the construction team and find out because everything is well-documented. It’s the little things that set us apart in O&M.”

Working in Australia is not without its challenges. Connecting a project to the power grid can be a longer process than in North America. Contracts can be more prescriptive. Extreme weather causes safety and schedule issues. And major cities are spread out, making it difficult to meet clients and partners face-to-face.

The Australian grid also faces an oversupply of electricity due to the abundance of rooftop solar panels on homes across the country. That’s why Houston believes battery energy storage systems (BESS) will be key to meeting Australia’s renewable energy goals in coming years. BESS allows surplus electricity generated at peak times to be stored and released into the grid during non-peak times. PCL has already incorporated BESS into solar projects across North America and is ready to bring that expertise to Australia.

“To get to Australia’s targets by 2030, we’re not going to do it without batteries. Batteries are the talk of the town,” Houston says. “They’re where solar was five to 10 years ago — a leading-edge technology at the start of what it could be.”

There are three different types of BESS projects in PCL’s portfolio: Solely BESS with no photovoltaic panels; AC-coupled, where the battery is connected at the substation; and DC-coupled, where the battery and photovoltaic panels are connected to the same inverter. The latter of the three is being employed at Maryvale.

Somers has seen European countries struggle with insufficient storage for renewable energy, so he agrees that BESS holds a ton of growth potential. Australians realize renewable electricity is the only way forward, he says, and targets are rising every year alongside generation projections. “There’s plenty of work going on and I don’t see it slowing down for at least another 15 years.”

In the shorter term, though, Moles is focused on selecting the right projects and delivering results to clients. But, in the longer view, he hopes PCL can bring as much value to Australian operations as it has to those in North America.

“I hope we can leverage the solar market to create a long-lasting, highly regarded, successful construction company that meets our clients’ needs from the west coast to the east coast of Australia in multiple sectors,” he says. “To me, that’s what success would look like.”