Beauty and the BESS: The big issues facing big batteries

PRESS RELEASE

There was a time that critics of renewable energy thought this was the killer question: What happens when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow?

It was devilishly simple, with the ability to seed a powerful fear.

Even those not versed in the mechanisms of our energy market could understand it and even pose it themselves in bars and at barbecues.

Then came the perfect answer: When it doesn’t rain, we still have drinking water. And that’s because, we store it.

The bravery of the rapidly-constructed Hornsdale battery in South Australia, promised by Elon Musk in 2017, is now in the rear-vision mirrors.

That year, there was an executive who referred so often to what he called The Dawn of the Battery Age, that his staff made hard-rock Metallica-style T-shirts from the phrase.

It remains a potentially great unused name for a rock album.

If that was the dawn, we are now seeing the true beauty of a grid-scale battery sunrise.

Battery Energy Storage Systems are springing up across the country as the price of the cells fall, to make them a leading solution, just as the technical functions they serve in the grid have peaked.

And they are looking increasingly racy when compared with the cost of other energy infrastructure.

Recent figures from the Clean Energy Council show investment in batteries is going gangbusters and was at near record levels in the first quarter of this year.

However, we need far more.

As we move forward, if we move as we should, much of the grid’s strength will one day be provided by grid forming inverters.

As coal continues to retire we will need the grid stability, firming and resilience batteries provide.

But in solving these problems, batteries have created others.

First, we need to solve how investment is incentivised and second, how they can be properly integrated to harness their full potential.

Thirdly, BESS developments are facing increased social license problems because of perceived fire risks.

The social license problems are becoming approvals problems with authorities, including local councils now cautious when local fire brigades express their fears.

Bushfires are a deeply ingrained concern that is front of mind across regional Australia.

Unless the industry moves to communicate and combat misinformation and reassure communities, they may face an uphill struggle for years to come.

Speaking with dozens of delegates, we know this will be one of the critical issues discussed at Australian Energy Week from June 17 – 20 at the Melbourne Convention Centre.

It is a sector that is at a cross-road and it is my hope that discussions that take place this week between energy leaders will yield real solutions.

That’s because the question of what happens if we don’t unlock the potential of our big batteries is one that’s truly difficult to answer.