Broken Hill to get big battery to provide system strength at edge of grid

AGL Energy has committed to another big battery project, this time a 50MW installation at Broken Hill with one hour of storage that will provide system strength services at the end of the grid.

The 50MW/50MWh battery will be supplied by Fluence and its consortium partner Valmec, and the $41 million project is being backed by $15 million from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency as part of its support for advanced inverter technologies, also known as grid forming inverters.

Chief operating office Markus Brokhof said the Broken Hill battery was another step forward as AGL becomes a leading orchestrator of batteries in Australia.

“As Australia moves forward with its energy transition, we know that firming technologies like batteries play an important role in energy storage and supporting renewable energy supply,” Brokhof said.

“Broken Hill’s unique edge-of-grid environment provides an ideal location for this advanced inverter technology to demonstrate how it can facilitate further penetration of renewable energy generation and add to the stability of the wider electricity network.”

The announcement comes less than a week after AGL said it had received planning approval for the Liddell big battery, which will be built in stages up to 500MW and 2000MWh at the site of the soon to be closed Liddell coal plant.

AGL is also building a 200MW battery at Torrens Island, again to test grid forming inverter technology, and will likely expand that battery’s storage size from one to up to four hours (or 800MWh) as the market expands.

The company is also committed to a 250MW big battery at the site of its Loy Yang A brown coal generator, and aims to create new clean energy hubs and industrial precincts around these centres as part of its strategy for the future.

AGL also has contracting rights over the new Wandoan battery in Queensland, and the Dalrymple North battery in South Australia, which pioneered the grid forming inverter tech in Australia’s main grid, and has a contract with Maoneng for the supply of 200MW and 400MWh of battery storate.

AGL also owns the 200MW Silverton wind farm near Broken Hill, (pictured above) and the 50MW Broken Hill solar farm, both of which have been heavily constrained at times because of the bottlenecks on the transmission line.

ARENA CEO Darren Miller said the next step for large-scale batteries was to show their capabilities in strengthening the grid as more renewables come online.

“Energy storage has been identified as a key priority technology under the Australian Government’s Low Emissions Technology Statement. We are particularly interested in seeing how AGL’s Broken Hill battery will utilise and demonstrate advanced inverter technology in a weaker section of the energy grid,” Miller said.

“Miller said large-scale batteries could provide a cheaper solution to providing system stability as the grid takes on more renewable energy.

Advanced inverters is keen as a key technology to enable the transition to a grid with 100 per cent renewables. They have been demonstrated in off-grid situations, and in smaller examples on the main grid.

ARENA and the Australian Energy Market Operator are keen to see them deployed at scale in the main grid to prove the theory that synchronous generation will not be needed to provide all the different services essential for grid security.

Fluence general manager in Australia, Aaron McCann said Broken Hill advanced grid-forming inverter battery is the first project Fluence is delivering to AGL within the framework agreement announced in January 2021.

“Broken Hill battery’s full power occurs instantaneously to quickly respond to large changes in voltage and/or frequency, which is the fastest response of all battery energy storage systems currently available in the market,” he said in a statement.

The project will be located on industrial land around 6km northwest of Broken Hill airport, with completion set for early 2023. It will be built on the lands of the Wiljali people.

See RenewEconomy’s updated Big Battery Storage Map of Australia