Western Power continues community battery rollout

State-owned utility Western Power has commenced construction of 18 new community battery energy storage systems with a combined 6.6 MW of storage capacity in Perth and Bunbury in Western Australia’s (WA) southwest. 

The project, funded in part under the federal government’s $200 million Community Batteries for Household Solar program, will deliver 13 new low-voltage batteries at locations across Perth and five medium-voltage batteries at sites in Bunbury.

WA Energy Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson said the battery locations were chosen to help manage the network in areas with high rooftop solar uptake.

“Western Australia has the highest uptake of rooftop solar in the country,” she said. “Now, we’re building the battery storage to make better use of it.”

“Community batteries like these sit on our network and act as a shared storage in neighbourhoods … [they] store excess rooftop solar during the day and release it back into the local grid when demand is higher, particularly during the evening peak.”

By absorbing excess solar power energy and managing how it’s released, Sanderson said the batteries will reduce strain on local infrastructure, helping to bring down systemwide costs and improve local energy reliability.

About 130 households will be connected into each of the Perth batteries, with about 3,600 households connected across the five larger Bunbury batteries.

The batteries being installed in Bunbury are expected to be operational by the end of this year, while those in the Perth metropolitan area are to be up and running by May 2027.

Federal Assistant Energy Minister Josh Wilson said the new community batteries will bolster the grid capacity already supported by more than 45,000 batteries installed in homes across WA, five community batteries already installed across Perth, and the state’s utility scale battery projects, including in Kwinana and Collie.

“These 18 community batteries will contribute to cutting network costs while enabling more renewable generation,” he said.

The federal government has provided about $9.3 million of the project’s $25 million total cost. The Community Batteries for Household Solar program aims to install 400 batteries nationwide to provide shared storage for households across Australia.