From ESS News
With the commencement in December of construction on two new utility-scale battery projects in Queensland and New South Wales, 2024 set new records for BESS project construction in the country. The two projects brought the total of new big batteries that have broken ground in 2024 to 4.9 GW/13 GWh.
The development is an encouraging one, with a combination of tenders and market dynamics like pronounced and increasing wholesale price volatility helping a host of projects right around the country achieve final investment decision. But it remains insufficient to avoid escalating curtailment rates.
“It just continues on the trend from 2023, which was widely stated as the year of the battery. Volatility in the market is still super high in Australia. And in all honesty, we’re not going to see reprieve of that until a lot of the battery capacity comes online,” Dixon said.
A reduction in market volatility will be welcomed by Australia’s electricity planners, with the volume of battery storage coming online able to both provide ancillary services to the grid while also shifting meaningful volumes of solar energy from the day to the evening and night.
“We have around 3 GW operational at the moment, but about half of that is still in commissioning. So you still only have 1.5 GW on the market where the average load is 23 GW,” says Dixon. “Over the next two years, that 1.5 GW will go to 8 or 9 GW and that is when you will start to see a shift in the dynamics of the market.”
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