Construction starts on biggest battery in Australia’s most advanced renewable grid

Energy company Alinta has started building what will be South Australia’s largest battery, the giga-scale Reeves Plains project.

The first stage of the project will be sized at 250 megawatts (MW) and 1,000 megawatt hours (MWh), making it the first in the state to reach gigawatt scale storage, but Alinta plans a second stage that will double its size and make it one of the biggest in the country.

Early works on the project were actually announced in June last year, when GenusPlus was appointed as the contractor, but now actual construction is happening to install the 194 CATL-supplied battery containers. 

Alinta obtained development approval from the state in 2024, and closed on the financial investment decision (FID) in June last year as well, and has also won the rights to an underwriting agreement with the federal government’s Capacity Investment Scheme.

It is one of a number of big battery projects in South Australia, attracted to volatile pricing as the state heads towards its target of reaching 100 per cent net renewables by the end of next year, the first gigawatt-scale grid in the world to reach such a milestone powered by wind and solar and with no hydro.

Reeves Plains is Alinta Energy’s third battery project, after the ground-making Newman battery in the Pilbara, and the Wagerup battery in Western Australia’s main grid.

The Reeves Plains project was originally destined to host a 300 MW gas-fired power station, and approval for that project was obtained eight years ago, but now appears to be on the back burner – one of many such projects where the plunging cost of battery storage has displaced plans for gas fired generation..

In its LinkedIn post, Alinta said the battery project was “three years in the making”, suggesting the idea, development and follow through on the two massive storage systems has leapfrogged the gas part of the Reeves Plains project.

In December last year, Alinta was sold to listed Singapore company Sembcorp Industries, which runs 8 gigawatts (GW) of gas power plants in Asia and the UK and slightly more than 20 GW of wind, solar, hydro and batteries in the same locations. 

Sembcorp sold all of its coal assets, and made a big deal about doing so to investors, but is now promising to keep Loy Yang B open for as long as Victoria needs it – but also reinvest the juicy profits into renewables. 

So whether the Reeve’s Plains gas plant gets off the drawing board, and the second stage of the massive battery reaches FID, is now up to them.

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