First stage of Australia’s biggest battery project energised to start flattening solar duck

The first stage of what will be Australia’s biggest battery project has been energised – little more than a year after securing its development contract – and will soon be in operation to help flatten the growing solar duck in Western Australia’s main grid.

The Collie battery is being built by Neoen in two stages, including a 219 MW/877 MWh first stage that was among the first winners of special contracts issued last year to soak up rooftop solar in the middle of the day and time shift it to the evening peak.

A second stage of the battery – even bigger at 341 MW and 1,263 MWh – won a similar contract in a new tender held earlier this year and will become the biggest battery in the country when complete at 560 MW and 2240 MWh.

The energisation of the first stage of the Collie battery was announced by Neoen Australia on its LinkedIn page. It said the battery facility is expected to be completed and in full operation by the end of the year. It is using Tesla Megapack technology.

The Collie batteries are being built – along with a nearby 500 MW and 2,000 MWh battery being developed by state generation company Synergy – in the same city that has hosted the state’s coal generation facilities for half a century.

These last coal generators are expected to close by the end of the decade, but the batteries – along with other facilities at Kwinana and Wagerup – have a specific task of addressing the problem of growing rooftop solar in the day, which is reducing “operational demand” on the grid to levels which the market operator says makes it difficult to handle.

The first stage of Neoen’s Collie battery has been contracted for two years to make 197MW of battery storage capacity available for four hours during the middle of the day (between 10am and 2pm) to charge, and lift minimum demand levels on the grid.

It will be required to provide a similar capacity in the evening peak, between 4.30pm and 8.30pm, in this case to help reduce demand.

It will be paid handsomely for that work. After the contract for the first stage was announced, Neoen announced an increase in anticipated earnings of $160 million a year from 2025, much of it from the solar duck contract.

Once the second stage of the battery is built, Neoen says the combined battery will have the ability to “charge and discharge 20 per cent of the average demand” in W.A.’s main grid, known as the South West Interconnected System.

Neoen, currently under a $10 billion takeover bid from Brookfield, has already built the Hornsdale, the Victoria Big Battery at Moorabool, and Bulgana batteries, and is currently commissioning the Capital battery in the ACT, putting the finishing touches to the Western Downs battery in Queensland and building the Blyth battery in South Australia.

See Renew Economy’s Big Battery Storage Map of Australia for more information.