Utility Scale Storage

With the approval for a 176 MW solar farm and 66 MW battery storage facility near Murray Bridge, South Australia’s utility-scale wind and solar pipeline has reached some 10 GW.

As it continues to drive renewables and energy storage, the South Australian government has given its tick of approval for the 280 MW Bungama Solar Farm coupled with a 140MW/560MWh battery storage facility proposed by EPS Energy.

The Northern Territory has given major project status to an ambitious plan to develop a 10 GW solar farm coupled with a 20-30 GWh storage facility near Tennant Creek and export solar power harvested in the Australian desert to Singapore via subsea cables.

United Kingdom-based Highview Power has contracted with U.S. energy developer Tenaska to pursue gigawatt-hour scale cryogenic energy projects in the U.S. Highview reports a storage cost of $140/MWh at industrial scale; the firm currently operates a 5 MW pilot facility in England.

The South Australian government has given its tick of approval for the development of a 5 MW/10 MWh compressed air energy storage facility, which will store excess solar and wind power at a closed underground mine.

Australia’s first large-scale project to use pumped hydro to store solar generated power, the Kidston facility in north Queensland, has landed a $610 million loan from the Federal Government’s the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF).

The McGowan Government is continuing to forward WA’s Future Battery Industry Strategy with the launch on a new early-stage funding initiative. On Wednesday, the government announced a new online Funding Assistance Register, a further boost to the state’s ambition toward a world-leading, sustainable, future battery industry by 2025.

With a glut of solar capacity having come online this year, cheaper financing would help keep some of that momentum but policymakers cannot be persuaded of the economic benefits of clean energy unless state-owned utility EVN opens up.

Increased storage and strategic transmission development will be needed to ensure the lowest cost and risk transition of Australia’s energy system, the Australian Energy Market Operator states in its latest study. In 20 years time, the need for storage will be at a scale not seen before in the NEM, and both pumped hydro storage and distributed storage are set to play major roles in lowering wholesale electricity prices and building a reliable and resilient power system.

One of Australia’s largest utility-scale solar arrays and the biggest energy storage facilities was given a tick of approval.