As Renew Economy wrote on Thursday, the size of big battery projects in Australia is getting bigger and bigger. Those that are being proposed now are one hundred times bigger, in terms of storage capacity, than the country’s first big battery at Hornsdale in South Australia.
That first battery was sized at 100 MW and 129 MWh and is already dwarfed by the scale of the battery projects now under construction, with the Collie battery being built by Hornsdale owner Neoen nearly 20 times its storage capacity at 560 MW and 2,240 MWh.
But that Collie battery does not even make the list of the top 10 battery projects currently proposed for Australia’s main grids, either in terms of connection capacity and storage capacity.
This first graph shows the top ten projects by storage capacity while the second shows the top 10 by connection capacity. Only one project, the Stanwell battery in Queensland, reaches the top 10 in either category.
Newer battery projects have more storage capacity because their focus is more on energy arbitrage and time-shifting renewables, but connection capacity is also important in terms of filling in short term gaps and responding to grid events.
Note: See also Renew Economy’s Big Battery Storage Map of Australia. And to find out more about Renew Map’s resources and offerings, please click here.
