Another big battery prepares to power up as Sunshine state leads extraordinary charge to storage in 2026

The battery component of Iberdrola Australia’s Broadsound solar and battery project in Queensland has joined the energy market operator’s asset management list, as it gears up to add valuable new energy storage capacity to the Sunshine State’s grid.

In an update published on LinkedIn this week, Geoff Eldridge from Global Power Energy says the Broadsound battery energy storage system (BESS) had officially transitioned into the AEMO Market Management System (MMS) on Wed March 25, marking the start of its testing and commissioning phase.

The 180 megawatt (MW), 360 megawatt-hour (MWh) battery, which is located at Clarke Creek, around two hours north of Rockhampton, has been developed alongside a 376 MW (DC) solar farm.

Eldridge says the Broadsound solar farm (296 MW AC) entered AEMO’s MMS on in late December and is currently progressing through its own commissioning process.

As Eldridge also notes, the milestone for the Broadsound BESS is part of a burst of storage activity on the Queensland grid.

This includes the powering up last month of Quinbrook’s 260 MW, 619 MWh stage one Supernode BESS, CleanCo’s 250 MW 500 MWh Swanbank BESS south of Brisbane, and Stanwell’s 300 MW, two-hour Tarong Battery in the state’s South Burnett region.

“Across the most recent wave of large-scale battery entries, in the current financial year, we have seen a total of 4,122 MW of maximum capacity added to the NEM,” Eldridge says.

“Queensland leads this growth with 1,410 MW of new capacity, followed by New South Wales (1,253 MW), Victoria (1,240 MW) and South Australia (219 MW).

“As the energy transition accelerates, the continued growth of the BESS fleet is critical to maintaining grid stability and meeting the increasing demand for fast-response, dispatchable capacity across the National Electricity Market.

“BESS play an essential role in shifting generation, reducing curtailment, and supporting the reliable integration of variable renewable energy.”

Over the past week, both the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) and the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) have sung the praises of utility-scale battery storage in helping to push down wholesale electricity prices and push out forecasts of gas shortages, by displacing demand.

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