EnergyAustralia breaks ground on its first four-hour big battery in Victorian coal country

EnergyAustralia has marked a new milestone on its journey to build an energy storage pipeline of 1.6 gigawatts by 2030, with the turning of the first sod at its $700 million, four-hour Wooreen big battery in Victoria.

Construction of the 350MW/1,400MWh Wooreen Energy Storage System (WESS) was officially kicked off on Friday with a ceremony at the battery’s Latrobe Valley site, adjacent to EnergyAustralia’s Jeeralang gas power plant and in the heart of Victorian coal country.

Work gets underway following the WESS’s selection in September as one of six winners of the federal government’s Capacity Investment Scheme, and one of two CIS winners for EnergyAustralia, alongside the 50 MW/ 200 MWh Hallett BESS in South Australia – an achievement dubbed a “highlight of the year,” by the gentailer’s parent company, CLP.

EnergyAustralia says the Victorian battery’s name, Wooreen, meaning “light,” was gifted to the project by the Elders of the Gunaikurnai Traditional Owners, and reflects the project’s role in illuminating the path to a sustainable energy future for the Latrobe Valley.

Speaking at the sod turning ceremony, EnergyAustralia managing director Mark Collette said the WESS is the largest single project investment made by the gentailer, to date.

“It’s a big day for us,” Collette told a gathering at the battery site, which is currently an empty paddock.

“This is the biggest project we’ve ever done. It’s around $700 million – it’s the biggest single investment we’ve ever made.

“And and we are doing it in a way that minimises the impact on the land and the broader area. This paddock is right next to the Jeeralang power station … is right next to transmission infrastructure. It is the perfect place to put infrastructure of this of this nature.

“Wooreen will provide capacity to meet demand peaks while enabling more renewable energy to enter the electricity market, contributing to better customer energy outcomes,” Collette said.

Jeeralang Power Station to the right, “the paddock” to the left. Image: Sophie Vorrath

Earlier this week, EnergyAustralia’s Hong Kong-based parent company described ongoing investment in new energy storage capacity as critical for the Australian business, to take advantage of increasing electricity price volatility and to replace its Yallourn coal power plant in Victoria before its retirement in three years time.

In its 2024 full-year results announcement on Monday, CLP said its Australian gentailer business is targeting a pipeline of 1.6 gigawatts of storage out to 2030, including big batteries and pumped hydro projects – many of which the company plans to develop and fund itself.

“Where we have transmission, land, water and people, and where we are very competitive, we [will] develop here a cap-ex plan where we tender on the project quite successfully because we can get the right return,” CLP CFO Alex Keisser said during the company’s full year results presentation on Monday.

The installation of the Wooreen battery next to Jeeralang – a nearly 50-year old gas peaking plant that has an increasingly niche, but still important, role in stabilising the grid – is also symbolically signficant. The old and the new, side by side.

Indeed, the Latrobe Valley is emerging as a major hot-spot for energy storage, including the 150 MW/ 150 MWh Hazelwood battery, which started operations in mid-2023 at the site of Engie’s decommissioned Hazelwood coal plant.

The 100 MW/ 200 MWh Latrobe Valley Bess is under construction by Tilt south of Morwell, and the recently approved 450 megawatt Hazelwood North solar farm, between Morwell and Traralgon, includes provision for a massive 450MW/1800MWh battery energy storage facility.

Victorian energy minister, Lily D’Ambrosio, who also attended the ceremony – and wielded a ceremonial shovel in the turning of the sod – said the occasion was a landmark day for the state’s energy transition.

Victorian energy minister Lily D’Ambrosio, left, and EnergyAustralia managing director Mark Collette, turning the sod. Image: Sophie Vorrath

“It marks the next step in the Latrobe Valley’s energy journey and evolution from legacy coal to becoming a new type of energy powerhouse for our state.

“The Wooreen battery is going to be built very soon,” D’Ambrosio said. “The idea is that it opens in 2027 and it comes at the time where we know that we will need more firming capacity, as more …variable renewables come into our system.

“It will also come at a time, of course, that Yallourn power station, which we have relied on for so many decades, will come to its end in 2028 so the timing of it is really important.”

Collette says Yallourn’s retirement date is now effectively locked in.

“We’ve announced the closure date of your lawn on the 30th of June, 2028, and we’ve started conversations with every single person on site about what comes after Yallourn,” he told Renew Economy on Friday.

“We have actually just finished the refurbishments of the four units that we committed to after 2022, which cost us about $400 million, and the purpose of that was to give the best reliability [until retirement]. Our team did a great job.”

This puts the pressure on the team behind the Wooreen project – hardware and software is being supplied by Wärtsilä Energy, while Zenviron has been contracted to deliver the balance-of-plant works – to get the big battery finished on schedule, in 2027.

At the ceremony on Friday, Wärtsilä Energy’s vice president of energy storage and optimisation, Andy Tang, joked that his team was also feeling the weight of Wooreen being EnergyAustralia’s biggest project yet.

“That puts a lot of pressure on us to deliver on EnergyAustralia’s largest single project – and to do so in a timeline that keeps the energy minister happy,” Tang said. “So we are committed to do so.”

Certainly, it’s not Wärtsilä’s first rodeo. The Finnish giant has been the battery provider of choice on projects for each of Australia’s Big Three gentailers, including for AGL Energy’s Torrens Island battery and Origin Energy’s Eraring BESS.

“We already have a pipeline of over 4 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of batteries in the country, so we are delighted to be able to help and participate in this in this project,” he said on Friday.

“There has been a tremendous amount of work that has gone on to make sure that we are delivering exactly what is needed [for Wooreen].

“We will be able to improve system reliability all while integrating the large amount of renewables that are coming into the grid in in Australia, and particularly in Victoria,” Tang said.