Biggest battery on Queensland grid gets energised

French renewables developer Neoen has announced a new milestone for its 270 MW / 540 MWh Western Downs Battery – the biggest in Queensland and currently the largest in Australia to be co-located with a solar farm – with the successful energisation of the project’s substation.

The battery, part of what Neoen calls its Western Downs Green Power Hub, is located on Barunggam country near the town of Chinchilla, next to the 400MW Western Down solar farm, which was commissioned in the first half of last year.

Neoen Australia said in a LinkedIn post last week that the energsiation of the substation had been ticked off “ahead of schedule,” thanks to “commitment and collaboration” from the teams co-developing the big battery, including UGL, Powerlink Queensland and Tesla.

“This hashtag#bigbattery is part of Neoen‘s Western Downs Green Power Hub in Queensland, located next to our 460 MWp solar farm, and is on track for operations in Q4 2024 !” the post says.

Neoen is the biggest developer of big battery storage projects in Australia, having started the ball rolling with the Hornsdale Power Reserve in South Australia, and adding the country’s largest, the Victoria Big Battery, and another at Bulgana.

As well as the Western Downs battery the company is currently building four new big batteries, including the Collie stage 1 and the newly announced Collie 2 projects that combined will be the biggest in Australia at 560 MW and 2240 MWh, and more batteries at Capital in Canberra and Blyth in South Australia.