Big solar and batteries lead march to the grid, but new plans for wind are piling up

A flurry of new solar and battery projects have appeared in the energy market operator’s grid management system in the past two weeks, driving home just how popular the two technologies have been with investors, both separately and together as solar-battery hybrids.

The first to appear, last week, was Acen Australia’s 200 megawatt (MW), 400 megawatt-hour New England battery energy storage system (BESS), which has been installed next to what remains one of the biggest PV projects in the country, the 720MW New England solar farm.

As Renew Economy has reported, the New England BESS was backed by the NSW government’s Emerging Energy Program, a $75 million initiative to fast-track the development of new firmed renewables, as the state prepares for a grid beyond coal.

The solar component – the first 400 MW stage of which was completed by the start of last year – is also backed by a 20 year underwriting agreement from the NSW state government.

As Global Power Energy’s Geoff Eldridge explains here, the New England BESS is listed on AEMO’s Market Management System (MMS) as two bidirectional battery units, under two different Dispatchable Unit Identifiers (DUIDs).

“The New England BESS split across two DUIDs is … a useful reminder that larger BESS projects can appear in MMS as multiple unit groupings rather than a single line item,” Eldridge says.

Also joining the AEMO dashboard towards the end of last week were two solar farms – Global Power Generation’s 100 MW Bundaberg Solar Farm, in Queensland and European Energy’s 80 MW Lancaster Solar Farm in Victoria.

Interestingly, both of these projects are backed by power purchase agreements with high profile corporate customers: Tesltra for the Bundaberg project and Apple for Lancaster. Accordingly, notes Eldridge, both projects are listed with AEMO as semi-scheduled generating units.

And while it’s solar and batteries coming into the grid management system this month, it’s new wind projects that have this week dominated new projects to join the federal EPBC queue, perhaps lending weight to the idea that 2026 might be a comeback year for wind power.

New to the queue for federal environmental assessment this week is the Twin Hills wind farm, an up to 110 turbine project and battery being proposed by Wind Prospect for 30 km north-east of Eneabba and 260 km north of Perth in Western Australia.

Also there is a proposal from Equis Wind Australia to build a 600 MW wind farm and “associated ancillary infrastructure” in Jackson North, around 35 km south-west of Wandoan in Queensland.

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