Utility Scale Storage

Hybrid energy systems are blooming in Australia’s remote locations, as renewables are increasingly partnered with gas or diesel to advance the greening of desert industries and communities that operate far from the grid.

Renewables developer Neoen has released its 2020 results, announcing an 18% increase in revenue from 2019, a significant portion of which materialised from its Australian assets including the Hornsdale big battery.

The Australian Energy Market Operator’s second State of the System update, a sort of ‘Around-the-Grounds’ of the National Energy Market, has revealed that 2020 set new records for both number of new projects connected and new megawatts of generation.

Debt financing services from Bank of China, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and Westpac, have brought the first 400 MW stage of the New England Solar Farm to financial close, a massive milestone for massive hybrid project.

Enova Community Energy have confirmed clean energy giant Tesla will supply the battery for its first grid-scale shared community battery and peer-to-peer solar energy trading project being developed in the New South Wales Hunter Region.

Energy utility AGL has reaffirmed its ambition to have 850 MW of new large-scale battery storage in its portfolio by the end of 2024 after announcing falling power prices and an outage at the coal-fired Liddell Power Station in New South Wales had wiped out more than a quarter of its half-yearly profit.

The highly successful Western Australian community battery rollout continues with the expansion of the PowerBank trial, run by the state’s biggest generator and retailer Synergy in conjunction with state-owned network operator Western Power.

At present, China accounts for almost 75% of global lithium-ion battery manufacturing capacity and this share is set to increase through the short term with its build-out of new facilities. And although the US and Europe are enacting policies to encourage domestic battery production, there has been a distinct lack of support for investment in the supply and refining of the raw materials to achieve this. In China, the opposite holds true. 

Chinese inverter maker Sungrow has switched on a 6 MW / 21 MWh solar-plus-storage facility on the island. The FIT project’s connected AC capacity is limited to only 845 kW, but the containerised storage solution provided by the company ensures its viability.

CEP.Energy has joined the race that stores the nation, the race, that is, for big battery supremacy. Joining giants like AGL, Origin Energy and Neoen, CEP.Energy has announced plans for a 1.2 GW megabattery in the Hunter region of New South Wales. The battery is one of four in a 2 GW battery storage portfolio planned throughout Australia.