How a wind and battery hybrid could replace a coal plant – and outperform it at almost every level

Hybrid wind and battery projects could cover off almost all of the energy generation and grid services currently provided by Australia’s remaining coal plants, but without the breakdowns or the pollution, and with a bunch of added extras coal plants can’t do.

Daniel Ryan, who is technical lead of future grid at Envision Energy, says the China-based company can “clearly see the value” of hybrid renewables power stations in Australia, where wind and battery energy storage could be integrated behind a single grid connection point.

While grid-coupled solar-battery hybrid projects are all the rage in Australia’s renewables development pipeline at the moment – highly prized for their numerous economic and technological advantages – the wind sector is playing catch-up on this trend.

Ryan says that while Australia has many “renewable power parks” and has also built have some of the world’s largest onshore wind farms, most of the operational wind and battery projects are what he describes as “un-orchestrated;” separate control systems, and “very simplistic.”

Given the lack of operating examples in Australia, Envision has built its own large-scale “living laboratory” in Chi Feng in China, to get a better understanding of what true, AC-coupled wind and battery energy storage systems (BESS) can offer a modern-day grid.

“This is not a pilot or a small demonstration,” Ryan told the 2026 Wind Industry Forum in Melbourne on Tuesday. 

“It’s a self-developed, fully integrated renewable generation system, combining gigawatts of renewables, grid-forming storage, power electronic loads, and high voltage infrastructure.

“Bringing these elements together, we can clearly see the value of coordinated hybrid systems in Australia,” Ryan said. 

“By integrating wind and BESS behind a single connection point, we move from a collection of assets to a fully orchestrated power plant.” 

A coal vs wind-BESS ‘thought experiment’

But with an eye to the Australian market, Envision has taken its R&D efforts a step further than the living lab in China to a “thought experiment” based on one of Australia’s largest remaining coal plants.

“To get a better understanding of what a future wind-BESS hybrid generator needs to deliver, we thought that it’s useful to look at what we’re trying to replace,” Ryan told the conference. 

“As we’re based in Victoria, we did a thought experiment on Loy Yang Power Station,” he said, referring to the until recently Alinta Energy-owned Loy Yang B plant in the Latrobe Valley that is likely to one of the last to close, with a 2046 date pencilled in.

“(Loy Yang) delivers a wide range of system services, including around 1.2 gigawatts (GW) of reactive power capability, 10 GVA [giga-volt amperes] of bulk current contribution … and frequency control services; 200-400 megawatts (MW) of contingency and regulation FCAS. 

“These characteristics are what have historically underpinned grid stability for Victoria for the past, say, 50 years. 

“So, the key question becomes, can a wind-BESS hybrid not only replace the energy output but also exceed the system performance of a coal power station?

To replace Loy Yang with a wind-BESS hybrid, Envision landed on a 3.35 GW wind farm paired with a 1 GW grid-forming BESS, which Ryan says reflects the size and scale of projects that are beginning to emerge in markets like Australia. 

“Starting with system services, it’s immediately clear that a wind-BESS hybrid doesn’t just match coal in many areas, it actually exceeds it,” he told the conference. 

Ryan says that on regulation and contingency FCAS [frequency control ancillary services] the BESS would provide two- to six-times as much as Loy Yang – and could also participate heavily in the one-second FCAS market.

The hybrid power station also offers the primary frequency response contribution of the wind farm, Ryan adds, which is “slower, but still very significant due to a scale.” 

“We can conclude, I think, from this that the frequency performance of this power station far exceeds any coal power station,” he told the conference.

“For reactive power capability, the plant gives us around 1300 megavar, which is slightly more than Loy Yang, and should be definitely sufficient for any voltage regulation purposes in the network. 

“And finally, in terms of fault level, this falls a little bit short, of course, of the coal power station,” Ryan says. 

“However, we note that because we have a grid forming desk and a wind farm behind a single connection point, it should still be quite significant at a system level, and I think, as technology provider, we’d argue … that maybe fault level isn’t the best defining characteristic for system strength.

“So, what are the key takeaways with hybrid renewable power plant? You don’t just get around the same performance as a coal power station, but you actually get a lot of other benefits,” Ryan told the conference. 

“You can operate at low SER [specific energy rating], you can perform black start and islanding, and you can operate without power generation. 

“All of these a coal power station usually can’t do.”

“The market is going to take off”

For wind industry veteran and Envision Energy’s head of wind in Australia, Peter Cowling, the increasingly urgent need to replace coal with cleaner and smarter hybrid renewables technology is one the “super attractive” fundamentals of the Australian market.

“We have a coal sector that literally must retire at some point, particularly Victoria, given the age of [its] facilities and their emissions intensity,” he told the same conference on Tuesday. 

“The resource is phenomenal, still, by any global standard, and the transition is actually incredibly advanced. There is – despite the difficulties of closing new generation programs – … still extraordinary momentum.

“We’ve obviously got a bunch of transmission and planning issues to resolve, and ultimately cost issues to resolve, to get more electrons being generated … but the projects are there. 

“There’s 60-odd gigawatts of projects. We’ve just got to push those through, and I think we will fairly quickly find ourselves with the opposite problem, which is a crazy boom in two years’ time, where we can’t find enough people and cranes. 

“So …we really do believe the market is going to take off,” Cowling said.

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