Australia is slowly getting solar panels on a scale that can match its seriously vast quantities of sunlight.

On Wednesday, two new solar plants officially opened in the New South Wales towns of Nyngan and Broken Hill. According to the project's owner, AGL Energy, they will generate enough power to serve more than 50,000 homes.

The two plants cover more than 375 hectares (927 acres) in total, making them the largest in Australia and potentially the Southern Hemisphere. Built by First Solar, the utility‐scale solar plants have a total capacity of 155 megawatts.

The Nyngan and Broken Hill plants have generated more than 200,000 megawatt-hours of renewable energy since coming online in July 2015 and December 2015, respectively, according to AGL's launch statement.

"[That's] enough to power around 34,000 average Australian homes," the company claimed. "Annually, the two plants combined will produce approximately 360,000 megawatt-hours of renewable energy, powering more than 50,000 average Australian homes."

The extraordinary solar field at Nyngan which is now the largest operational in the Southern Hemisphere pic.twitter.com/BCtGX5kmBE — Greg Hunt (@GregHuntMP) January 20, 2016

Greg Hunt, Australia's minister for the environment, said in a statement the two plants had doubled the country's large-scale solar capacity.

"As well as reducing CO2 emissions by an estimated 301,560 tonnes a year and helping advance large-scale solar technology in Australia, the AGL solar plants delivered some 400 jobs during the construction phase and injected close to $29 million into local economies," he said.

On a smaller, but still significant scale, home solar systems are set to get a boost this year with the arrival of technology including Tesla's Powerwall, which can store surplus solar energy. Homegrown competitors, including ZEN Energy, also offer home energy storage solutions.