Regional electricity network operator Ergon Energy has unveiled plans to build a grid-connected 700 kW / 1,000 kWh battery energy storage system that can operate as a microgrid to support the far north Queensland community of Mossman Gorge during outages.
The $5 million (USD 3.21 million) pilot project will include a battery energy storage system, an inverter, and communications equipment. The battery will be provided by Western Australia-based Pacific Energy and utilise lithium-ion NMC (nickel manganese cobalt) chemistry.
Ergon said the battery will be supplied by the network on a day-to-day basis and when there is a fault upstream on the high-voltage network, the microgrid will disconnect from the main grid and operate in ‘island mode.’ The utility said the battery system will have the capacity to provide the Mossman Gorge community with several hours of power during an outage.
Mossman Gorge’s energy needs are already partly served by a rooftop solar array installed atop the cultural centre.
Microgrid Project Engineer Jake Anderson has confirmed that the rooftop PV system will continue to operate when the battery is islanded. This will reduce electricity demand, which will help to extend the amount of time the battery is capable of islanding. Any excess energy will be used to support the microgrid loads and potentially charge the battery while islanded.
Glenn Springall, general manager of renewables and distributed energy at Ergon, said the microgrid project is the first of its kind in the utility’s network that spans about 1.7 million square kilometres and provides services to more than 790,000 domestic and business customers.
“The project is the first of its kind in Queensland where we’re utilising energy storage to reduce the impact of power outages in a fringe-of-grid community,” he said. “The battery will be a backup when grid supply isn’t available during planned and unplanned outages, including after severe weather events that cause damage to the upstream network.”
Anderson said Mossman Gorge provides the ideal canvas for the microgrid pilot project because it is small, has a source of surplus solar power and is located at the end of the line, more than 10 kilometres from the Mossman substation.
“This is the ideal location for a microgrid such as this because they’re on the end of a distribution network, which means they’re subject to all outages that are upstream of them,” he said, adding that the project will help to develop Ergon’s “business knowledge and more so, the industry knowledge, of how we can deploy batteries.”
“I think there will be interest from a lot of DNSPs and other stakeholders on the learnings from this and how we can deploy batteries more effectively into the future.”
Construction of the Mossman Gorge microgrid is scheduled to start later this year with the project expected to be completed in early 2026.
Springall said the microgrid could be the first of hundreds of such installations across Ergon’s network with the project to provide the technical knowledge and the expertise on how to develop, deploy, and maintain a project to meet community needs.
“All over the world, electricity entities are partnering with communities to identify ways to integrate energy storage and improve reliability and increase hosting capacity of rooftop solar and other distributed energy resources,” he said.
“Queensland’s a big place and we have assets in some very hard to reach and remote locations. This is the first site of what we envisage will be the future of distributed energy across Queensland.”
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