First big battery in NSW bursts in action for first time in western Sydney

The first big battery on the NSW grid has burst into action, just days after receiving its official registration, and as it starts on the journey to full commissioning.

The 50MW/75MWh Wallgrove battery is located next to a substation in western Sydney, is owned by Transgrid, features Tesla Megapack technology and will be operated by Iberdrola.

Geoff Eldridge from NEMlog spotted its first activity on the NSW grid on Friday afternoon (See graph below).

“Bursts” might be overplaying it a bit, as the output was less than a megawatt, but it is nevertheless an important milestone on the transition of Australia’s most coal dependent grid to a renewable energy powerhouse.

Most of the state’s coal generators are expected to exit the grid by the end of the decade, possibly all of them, Even the federal government, in its latest emissions forecasts, assumes that the NSW grid will flip from one dominated by coal to one that has 84 per cent of its supply coming from renewables by 2030.

That is a very quick transition. It will be supported by storage – both battery and pumped hydro – and by the state government’s roll out of wind, solar and storage projects at up to five different renewable energy zones.

The Wallgrove battery will deliver key services including “synthetic inertia” when the Tesla batteries operate in “virtual machine mode”. Batteries can deliver a range of grid services, along with time shifting the output of renewables, and can even act as “virtual transmission”, allowing capacity increases on poles and wires.