Chinese and Italian firms team up to launch portfolio of “first of its kind” wind and battery hybrids in Australia

Chinese-based wind turbine and battery maker Envision Energy has announced its first major deal in Australia, teaming up with Italy’s Fera to build a “first of its kind” wind and battery hybrid, with plans to roll out a gigawatt scale portfolio.

The announcement of the partnership was made at the Australian Wind Energy Conference in Melbourne on Thursday, and will see the development of a first “pilot” facility at the small 35 MW Wombelano project in western Victoria.

The project will likely feature a true wind and battery hybrid, sharing the same connection point and using grid-forming inverters. The construction of hybrid solar and battery plants is growing, but this is believed to be the first of its kind in Australia, apart from the ground-breaking wind, solar and battery hybrid at Kennedy in north Queensland.

The entry of Envision Energy is a significant one, as it brings a new turbine supplier to the Australian market, and in 2018 bought the battery division from Nissan. It also signed an MoU with one time Origin bidder Brookfield in 2023 for the potential manufacture of wind turbines in Australia. Brookfield now owns Neoen Australia.

Envision and Fera, which entered the Australian market in 2019, plan to develop a major pipeline of projects totalling up to 1 gigawatt of wind generation capacity and 1.5 GWh of battery energy storage.

Envision specialises in wind turbines, energy storage, and green hydrogen technologies, including an ammonia production facility that was commissioned in China just this week, claiming to be the world’s largest.

Fera launched in Australia in 2019, marking its first foray outside of Italy, and has already identified four wind projects across Victoria and Tasmania, including Wombelano.

“This collaboration represents a major step forward in demonstrating how hybrid wind and storage solutions can unlock new possibilities for Australia’s energy future,” said Kane Xu, the president of international product line of Envision Energy.

“We look forward to delivering projects that set new benchmarks for clean, flexible power.”

Australia’s first “DC-coupled” wind and battery project is preparing to power up in central western Victoria, as part of a one-turbine pilot retrofit at Goldwind’s 312 megawatt Moorabool wind farm.

The hybridisation of renewable and storage projects has become a major trend in Australia, but until now has been confined to solar hybrid projects. It is where a solar PV facility and a big battery share the same connection point, and are viewed by the market operator as one asset.

The DC-coupled solar-battery configuration – first seen a grid-scale at the 128 megawatt (MW) Cunderdin solar farm in Western Australia – also allows the solar power to be fed directly into a battery without needing to convert it to AC power first, improving efficiency and reducing costs.

Goldwind detailed its plans to deliver Australia’s first take on DC-coupled wind and storage earlier this year on LinkedIn, with a video depicting the journey of the 2 MW/4.8 MWh GoldBlock battery energy storage system (BESS) from ChangZhou to the project site at Moorabool.

In June, Goldwind Australia’s general manager of development, Medard Boutry, said the company was “just about to energise” the pilot retrofit to one of Moorabool’s 104 turbines.