Another big battery joins the grid as charging and discharging records fall across the country

Queensland is soon to have another big battery join its grid – and yet another operating next to one of its ageing coal fired generators – with the 300 MW/600 MWh Tarong battery now entering the grid management system.

The development was identified by grid watcher Geoff Eldridge, from GPE NEMLog, who says it means the battery – the first to be built by the state-owned generator Stanwell Corp – has met the conditions required to connect to the grid and commence testing and start working through the commissioning process.

Tarong – which has installed 164 Tesla Megapack machines – will be the fifth major big battery to join the grid in Queensland – following Wandoan South, Bouldercombe, Chinchilla and Western Downs – and will soon be joined by another half dozen battery projects already under construction.

That includes the even bigger 300 MW, 1,200 MWh Stanwell battery, which is also being built next to an existing coal fired power station and will be operating by mid 2027 – part of the Stanwell company’s plans to have 5 GW of battery storage by 2035.

Queensland has turned to big batteries in a big way – promising a “battery blitz” – after the explosion at the Callide coal fired power station in 2021 that might have triggered a system black were it not for the intervention of assets like the Hornsdale battery thousands of kilometres away in South Australia.

Queensland had no operating big batteries at the time, but now is rapidly setting new records, even in a grid that remains the most heavily dependent on coal in Australia. Eldridge notes that Queensland’s battery discharger hit a new peak of 475 MW at 5.55pm in the evening peak on Sunday. A year ago the record stood at just 150 MW.

It wasn’t the only record to fall in the last few days, with Victoria also setting a new discharge record of – 479 MW – again in the evening peak at 6.25 pm on Tuesday. Victoria also has five operating big batteries with at least another six under construction and more in the pipeline.

On Wednesday, a grid wide battery charging record of 1,067 MW was also noted by Eldridge. It occurred at 12.35pm, and soaked up excess solar with prices in negative territory in some states. At the same time, the battery share of grid load hit a new peak of 3.9 per cent.

As Eldridge notes, big batteries are now routinely operating at scale to create a “steady operational rhythm” as more wind and solar is added to the grid.

Just for context, though, the maximum total battery charge in the California grid is 8.5 GW, reached a few weeks ago, and its maximum share of load is 35 per cent. Australia is leading the world on the application of battery storage – including in grid forming inverters and grid services – but for sheer scale California and even Texas are out front.