Ausgrid pitches its first big batteries for Newcastle and Sydney

Network company Ausgrid is planning two big batteries as its first foray into the world of major energy storage installations, with proposals in with the New South Wales (NSW) planning department for projects at Homebush in Sydney and in Newcastle.

Both battery energy storage systems (BESS) will be sized at 200 megawatt (MW), two hour (400 MWh) systems.

And both show how useful it is to be an owner operator when it comes to electricity transmission infrastructure: both will be built on land already owned by Ausgrid and connect into the company’s own substations nearby, via new underground cables.

In Newcastle the site is the Steel River industrial complex, home to a data centre, the CSIRO Energy Research Centre, and a major recycling and processing hub for demolition and other materials.

In the western Sydney suburb of Homebush, the site is a lot zoned for electricity supply.

Ausgrid says the two BESS installations will provide storage and firming capacity, and frequency control ancillary services (FCAS) for the grid, and while it’s pushing the concepts through the planning process, it ultimately wants both to be built and operated by someone else.

The company has also already chosen its preferred technology, Tesla’s lithium iron-phosphate megapacks, according to the scoping reports issued to the New South Wales (NSW) planning department.

It anticipates construction on both to start in mid to late 2025. 

Ausgrid has form with community batteries, installing nine with federal funding since the program began until August this year. It says the batteries will push energy prices lower by feeding power into the grid at peak times. 

Adding to the battery cluster

The Steel River BESS in Newcastle won’t be the only one in the area. 

Just 8km away AGL is considering a four-hour, 500 MW BESS – or a 250 MW gas-fired power station – at Tomago, the home of the Tomago Aluminium site. 

To the south is the closed Munmorah coal power station, where the 850 MW / 1,680 MWh Waratah super battery is set to live. Origin is also building what will be a 2,000 MWh battery at the site of the Eraring coal generator in the same region.

And it isn’t the first BESS proposed for the Steel River industrial precinct either. 

The distribution and transmission line operator wants to put its battery in the Steel River industrial complex, the same spot as where Edify Energy and Precinct Capital pitched an energy storage unit in 2020/21.

But at 200MW, the Ausgrid proposal is significantly bigger than Edify’s 28 MW, two hour battery.

At the time Newcastle Lord Mayor, Nuatali Nelmes, hoped the Edify/Precinct Capital idea, which would have been the first of its kind in the area, might help the city attract more green industries into the Hunter region.