Meanwhile this is what's happening on the East Coast of...

Meanwhile
this is what's happening on the East Coast of Australia

snippets from energy storage news and vanadium.com


EnergyAustralia, a subsidiary of Hong Kong-headquartered China Light & Power, has a portfolio of energy resources that includes gas peaker plants, coal and a 66MW wind farm as well as two of Australia’s first large-scale battery storage projects, Gannawarra and Ballarat.

Both of those battery projects were completed in 2018 in the state of Victoria, and as reported by Energy-Storage.news, their first year in operation provided important data and proof points of how BESS assets could successfully participate in Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM).

Other projects the company already has in development include a 350MW, four-hour duration (1,400MWh) in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley. Like Mount Piper, EnergyAustralia has elected to build that project, called Wooreen Energy Storage System, on the site of one of its existing power plants, in that case the company’s gas-fired Jeeralang power plant.


As reported by our colleagues over at PV Tech recently, New South Wales is targeting the deployment of 12GW of renewable energy by 2030 as well as 2GW of long-duration energy storage, opening a bi-annual tender process in August.

The state is developing five large Renewable Energy Zone (REZ) multi-technology hubs, attracting strong interest from developers and investors.

In July this year, transmission operator Transgrid said that studies had shown grid-scale battery storage to be its preferred option for ensuring reliable electricity supplies in New South Wales’ regions, choosing from a range of considered options and highlighting potential “billions of dollars” in benefits from doing so.


Major Australian energy generator-retailer EnergyAustralia is tentatively planning to build a 500MW battery energy storage system (BESS) on land it owns in New South Wales.

Steps forward have been taken in the Waratah Super Battery project in New South Wales, Australia, expected to be the largest battery storage system anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere.
“The Waratah Super Battery will be the biggest network battery anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere, providing at least 700MW of standby network capacity to the grid,” state Treasurer and Minister for Energy Matt Kean said today.

Origin is also planning its own 700MW battery project in the region.

Earlier this year, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) said that from about 1.5GW of dispatchable energy storage connected to the National Electricity Market (NEM) by the end of the first half of this year, that figure needs to grow to about 46GW by 2050, with a capacity of about 640GWh.

Developer Akaysha Energy has been selected for the Waratah Super Battery project in New South Wales, Australia, with Powin Energy as key equipment supplier.

As such, state corporation EnergyCo NSW is finalising contract awards to work on the 700MW/1,400MWh battery energy storage system (BESS). Last week high voltage transmission system operator and manager Transgrid was appointed to upgrade necessary infrastructure to connect the project to the grid and Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM).

The acquisition came with a commitment to investing a billion Australian Dollars into Akaysha’s development of battery storage assets in Australia, as reported by Energy-Storage.news in mid-August. The developer was bought by a fund managed through BlackRock Alternatives’ Climate Infrastructure team.

Powin Energy and Akaysha signed a 1.7GWh BESS supply deal at that time. In addition to Waratah Super Battery, Akaysha is known to be developing eight other projects, with the total nine-project pipeline adding up to about 1GW of output and 3GWh of capacity

Meanwhile EKS Energy, the power electronics company recently bought by Powin Energy, will supply the site’s power conversion system (PCS) technology. In a recent interview with this site, Powin Energy executive VP Danny Lu discussed the strategy and reasons behind that acquisition.
“By investing in the development of the Waratah Super Battery, we will help to deliver greater grid resilience to ensure more Australians have access to reliable energy sources and support Australia’s orderly energy transition,” BlackRock co-head of climate infrastructure in the APAC region, Charlie Reid, said.

Developer Maoneng Group has received equity investment commitment that the company claims will fast track some of Australia’s biggest battery storage projects.

Mornington BESS is a 240MW/480MWh system that will be built in Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, a region popular with tourists and therefore seeing big fluctuations in demand for electricity throughout the year.

“The transition to renewable energy in Australia is accelerating under this government’s policy, and batteries are a key piece to the puzzle in facilitating higher grid penetration by solar and wind. The partnership allows us to focus on the job and to get it done sooner,” GMR chief executive and managing director Morris Zhou said.
Australia’s large-scale battery storage market appears to be on a big upward trajectory, particularly but not limited to, the states of New South Wales and Victoria.

This has been driven by a combination of the country’s high adoption of renewable energy, its relative lack of interconnectivity of the grid over long distances and latterly by supportive policies at state and now federal government level.