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"The solar farm will produce enough energy to run the equivalent of all of our council facilities during the day, which represents significant environmental returns for ratepayers and millions of dollars in savings on electricity costs," Nuatali Nelmes, Newcastle Lord Mayor, said.

The solar plant will cost $8 million, with $6.5 million of that lent by the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. Annual savings are expected to reach as much as $350,000, helping cut a power bill that had doubled in recent years.

"While cost savings are certainly a critical factor in our decision to build the solar farm, sustainability initiatives are about more than just money and our community expects us to be good environmental stewards," Ms Nelmes said.

A similar motivation mix spurred the University of Technology Sydney to power purchase agreement that will ensure a new $40 million solar plant at Walgett goes ahead.

The 32MW plant, to be built by Epuron with generation starting from mid-next year, will supply UTS with 27,000 MW-hours of electricity annually. That's about half the university's needs, Jonathan Prendergast, UTS Green Infrastructure Project Manager, said.

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The Walgett venture's benefits include "capping our exposure to energy prices", Mr Prendergast said, adding the project would allow the university to meet both financial and environmentally sustainable goals.

The surge in new solar projects comes as solar power supplied to the National Electricity Market serving eastern Australia surpassed wind for the first time in September. NSW alone has more than 11,000MW of new large-scale solar farms in the planning process, Fairfax Media reported last week.

“The amount of large-scale solar capacity that commenced generation during the [September] quarter is higher than the NEM’s entire large-scale solar capacity at the start of the year,” the Australian Energy Market Operator said in its latest quarterly energy report.

"Quarterly NEM [greenhouse gas] emissions reached their lowest level on record, both in terms of total emissions and average emissions intensity," AEMO said.

China, the world's largest supplier and installer of solar panels, meanwhile, is planning to hike its PV targets after eclipsing its 2020 goal set in 2015 by more than half.

The country's National Energy Agency is considering raising its 2020 target to at least 210 gigawatts of PN capacity,  but the goal could go as high as 270GW by then, according to PV magazine.

With Cole Latimer