Gas will do until low cost renewables and battery storage can provide good coverage. Australia has the highest rate of installation of household solar globally. We installed solar 8 years ago and yet to pay for an electricity bill and we feed back to the grid so 50% of energy demand is easily catered for with wind solar pumped hydro, normal hydro and in the Uk they have wave hydro also. Technology developments since have the capacity to provide shared electricity from communities with household solar so timing of energy demand can be managed. You have to wonder why posters are promoting extremely high cost nuclear with attached management risks and radioactive storage and exposure damage risks for Australia. We have plenty of free sun wind and water and gas in the interim. I hold STO as an important contributor to energy resources mix. We are smart enough to avoid nuclear I hope. Recent news item also reveals that farmers within 80km of a nuclear plant in USA have to complete special environmental testing at their cost to allow them to sell their crops.

Projects totalling 3 GW proceed in large-scale battery round in Australia

Transmission lines. Author: Nayu Kim. License: Creative Commons, Attribution 2.0 Generic.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) on Wednesday said it has selected 3 GW of battery storage projects to proceed in the competition for up to AUD 100 million (USD 68m/EUR 67m) in grant funding.

ARENA announced its AUD-100-million Large Scale Battery Storage Round in December last year to incentivise grid-scale batteries with advanced inverters, also known as grid-forming inverters.

It has now shortlisted 12 projects with a combined capacity of 3050 MW/7000 MWh and a combined value of AUD 3.7 billion. These projects have been invited to submit full applications by July 20, with winners in the funding round to be announced in late 2022.

The 12 projects represent a total ARENA grant request of AUD 297 million. They were picked out of 54 expressions of interest (EOIs). The ARENA grants will back both new build projects and retrofits for existing batteries.

ARENA said that the shift to more inverter-based generation such as wind and solar in Australia requires new ways of providing system services to maintain grid stability.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/huge-finance-deal-and-off-take-landed-for-one-of-australias-biggest-four-hour-battery-projects/

Battery storage developer Akaysha Energy says has locked in $650 million to build its four hour Orana battery in NSW, a project, in a deal that it says is the largest investment in a single battery anywhere in the world.

Akaysha Energy, the battery storage upstart backed by global funds giant BlackRock and which is also building the Waratah Super battery, another landmark project, says it has also secured a 12-year “virtual” offtake deal for a 200 megawatts (MW) component of the Orana project with EnergyAustralia.

“This ground-breaking and flexible offtake allows EnergyAustralia to virtually “charge” and “discharge” the 200MW ‘virtual battery’ to manage its price and load commitments to its customers, particularly during high demand periods,” says Akaysha Energy COO Paul Curnow.

That deal was critical to securing the funding for 415 megawatts (MW)/ 1660 megawatt hours (MWh) Orana battery, and it shows just how complicated financing is today for new energy projects.

The Orana BESS has long term energy service agreements with NSW and the federal government — it was named one of the winners of the first federal capacity investment scheme auction in November last year — and it has full NSW planning approvals, and the private offtake agreement with EnergyAustralia.

But even with those puzzle pieces in place, Akaysha had to bring 11 different funders together, with domestic support coming from ANZ, CBA and Westpac, and internationally from BNP, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, DBS, ING, Mizuho, Rabobank, Siemens Bank and SMBC.

The deal shows how massive renewable projects which require huge amounts of capital can be financed, even with a complex contracted offtake deal, says Akaysha Energy CEO Nick Carter.

“This announcement represents a significant achievement for Akaysha and marks a crucial step in our mission to rapidly deploy mega-scale BESS,” he says.

“Akaysha is now looking forward to the construction phase and moving rapidly towards COD [commercial operations date].”

Akaysha Energy’s total offtake agreements across its portfolio is now 1GW/2.4GWh. The Orana BESS will, for a time at least, be the biggest four-hour battery on Australia’s main grid, although it will be dwarfed by two even bigger four-hour batteries being built in Collie, Western Australia, by Neoen and Synergy.

The company and its portfolio was bought by Blackrock in 2022, after which Akaysha quickly landed one of the biggest prizes in Australian and global energy storage: the 850MW/1680MWh Waratah Super battery, which will play a key role as a giant “shock absorber” for the grid, particularly as coal fired power stations are phased out.

That battery is due to be complete in 2025.