Approval sought for solar hybrid project with biggest 8-hour battery in Australia

Renewable energy and storage developer Edify Energy has unveiled plans for a large solar-battery hybrid project in northern Victoria that would comprise what could be the biggest eight-hour battery facility in the country.

The Nowingi solar power station would comprise a 300 MW (ac) solar farm with an “integrated battery” that would be sized at up to 300 MW and 2,400 MWh, making it the biggest project of its type in Australia on a number of levels.

Solar hybrids have become a focus of new project developments because of their ability to store excess solar on site, and enables the solar farm to keep producing power during periods of negative prices. The battery can then inject the power into the grid in the more lucrative evening peaks, when prices are usually higher.

The solar hybrid projects built and committed to data feature mostly four hour batteries, so an eight hour battery would mean stored solar could be sent to the grid even later into the evening.

See: The Australian solar farm that is producing power well after sunset

Nowingi, if built to the scale envisaged in its application for approval under the federal government’s EPBC Act, would be the biggest of its type in the country, and feature the biggest eight-hour battery as well.

It would also rival the partly built Melbourne Renewable Energy Hub as the biggest battery of any type in Victoria in terms of storage, with both at 2,400 MWh.

The Nowingi project, named after the bushland and tracks located nearby, is located about 15km south of the 171MW solar farm Canadian company Recurrent Energy is currently building, and Raygen’s experimental 5MW solar thermal project.

Edify proposes to build a new substations to hook into the 200 kV transmission line running nearby. It is located in a grid once deemed too weak to support the number of solar and wind projects that had been built in the area – earning the sobriquet the Rhombus of Regret – but it has been reinforced in recent years.

Edify says construction would take about 18 months and employ up to 250 people. It hopes to start construction in 2026. It also says it’s been talking to the people living in the area since 2023, although it says there are no residences within 4kms of the project.

In April, Edify received approval under the EPBC Act for its Burroway solar-BESS in New South Wales (NSW), albeit into a storm of bizarre opposition.  And in May the developer lobbed another NSW solar-BESS into the EPBC queue and was promptly – within two weeks – told it didn’t need to be referred.

The 638 hectare Nowingi site features undulating sandy plains to which different varieties of mallee bushes cling to the thin layer of soil on top. It’s hit the federal queue as the site still has potential areas that could be used for foraging by 10 EPBC Act listed species and has been used for cropping, Edify says in its referral.

These birds and bats are the southern whiteface, brown treecreeper, malleefowl, south-eastern long-eared bat, red-lored whistler, regent parrots, Murray Mallee striated grasswren, major mitchell’s cockatoo, hooded robin, and Mallee emu-wren.

The regent parrot, south-eastern long-eared bat, malleefowl, and mallee emu-wren were all noted in the area in an ecological assessment from 2017.

Edify is yet to lodge a development application with the state government.

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