London-headquartered Global Sustainable Energy Opportunities (GSEO) will target energy arbitrage and frequency stability services revenue streams after completing the commissioning of a 4.95 MW two-hour capacity battery energy storage system at the site of an existing 4.95 MW solar farm near Murray Bridge in South Australia’s southeast.
GSEO, the renewables-focused offshoot of international investment giant Victory Hill Capital Partners, said the battery was commissioned late last month and, subject to authorisation by grid operator South Australia Power Networks (SAPN), is expected to reach full capacity in the coming weeks.
GSEO, which entered the Australian market in 2021 with the $25 million (USD 17 million) purchase of the solar farm at Murray Bridge and another operating 4.95 MW PV asset in Queensland, said the co-location of renewable energy generation with battery energy storage capacity forms a critical part of its investment strategy in Australia.
Victory Hill Capital Partners Co-Chief Investment Officer Richard Lum said the coupling of both technologies will allow for the optimisation of each technology.
“The complexity of managing the grid and ensuring stability when there is already such a high penetration of intermittent solar power generation in Australia is a real challenge,” he said.
“Its demands can only be faced with greater energy storage that will help provide smooth availability of power from renewable sources. Improving stability is also important to avoid curtailment of renewable energy.”
Lum said co-locating battery energy storage systems at GSEO’s Australian solar farms will provide more options to capture positive power price movements, prevent over exposure to negative prices, and allow the company to earn revenues from providing frequency response services to the grid.
The Murray Bridge hybrid project is just the first for GSEO which plans to co-locate battery energy storage systems with up to two hours of capacity at each of its Australian solar farms.
The company said it has already commenced development of a battery at its Queensland solar farm with work on optimising the grid connection of the energy storage system for the site now underway.
GSEO also expects to add battery energy storage systems at three solar projects currently under construction at Coleambally, Narrendera, and Dubbo in western New South Wales.
GSEO said all three 4.95 MW capacity solar farms are expected to be commissioned later this year.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.