Utility Scale Storage

The Australian government has beefed up its commitment to community batteries to support the integration of renewable energy in the grid with more than 420 battery energy storage systems to be installed in neighbourhoods across the country as part of its Community Batteries for Household Solar program.

The Maryvale solar and battery hybrid project being developed in central western New South Wales in one of two renewables projects with a combined generation capacity of 312 MW that have secured long-term energy service agreements through the state government’s latest tender round.

China, with an 18% share of the global population, uses 26% of the world’s primary energy and emits 33% of the world’s energy-related CO2. The energy transition unfolding in the country isn’t merely a national affair as its ramifications echo globally, explains Mahnaz Hadizadeh, a researcher for consultancy DNV.

Renewables investment firm Octopus Australia’s 128 MWh DC-coupled Fulham hybrid battery project and 80 MW solar farm have been granted a technical greenlight from AEMO.

The Central-West Orana renewable energy zone transmission project, with a projected network capacity by 2029 of 6 GW, has planning approval to begin building trasmission infrastructure, including lines and energy hubs.

Australian EPC contractor ACLE Services has broken ground on a 5 MW / 10 MWh battery energy storage project in northern Victoria that is the first in a planned pipeline of 27 batteries that will be rolled out across regional Australia delivering a combined capacity of 270 MWh.

Renewable energy is the cherry on top of a 25-year plan to secure Australia’s future 100% free of coal-generation where grid-scale renewables, storage and distributed solar, backed by gas, will secure the national electricity market for a predicted 313 TWh of demand by 2050.

New South Wales power grid owner Transgrid is looking at rolling out up to 14 synchronous condensers and 4.8 GW of batteries with ‘grid forming’ capability to protect and strengthen the security and stability of the electricity grid as coal-fired power plants retire and more renewables come online.

Australian renewables developer Edify Energy is planning to take advantage of existing infrastructure to maximise its access to the national electricity grid by building a 200 MW solar farm and four-hour duration battery energy storage system near the Callide coal-fired power station in central Queensland.

Australian infrastructure developer Pacific Partnerships has added one of the largest proposed solar farms in Australia to its growing portfolio, purchasing the development rights for the 700 MW Cobbora Solar Farm and co-located battery energy storage project planned for western New South Wales.