Huge new battery will be able to power South Pacific island for three hours a day, and pave way for more solar

New Caledonia, the Pacific’s third-largest island, is adding a big battery to its still mostly fossil fuelled energy mix, one big enough to store enough electricity to cover the equivalent of its main city’s power consumption for around three hours each day.

French renewable energy developer Akuo said this week that it has started construction on the 50 megawatt (MW), 150 megawatt-hour (MWh) battery energy storage system (BESS) in the municipality of Boulouparis, in the south of New Caledonia’s main island.

New Caledonia, some 1,210 kilometres east of Australia, has a population of less than 300,000, but the bulk of its energy demand comes from its nickel mining and refining industry, and the capital Noumea.

A 2022 report by the New Zealand Foreign Affairs and Trade ministry says nickel mining accounts for between 75 to 80 per cent of New Caledonia’s total energy usage, and the vast majority of this is supplied by fossil fuels.

The New Caledonian government adopted a transition plan in August 2023 which targets a 75 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 and a 50 per cent renewable energy target for the nickel sector by 2035.

As at 2022, a mix of solar, wind and hydro power only accounted for 5 per cent of New Caledonia’s total energy supply. The remaining 95 per cent is supplied by coal and oil.

Akuo already owns and operates three solar farms on the semi-autonomous French territory, including one in Boulouparis – the 6 MW Kwita Wije photovoltaic plant, which is itself backed by a 3 MW, 3 MWh storage facility. 

It says the Boulouparis battery will be one of the biggest of its kind in France, once it is completed in 2027.

Akuo says the new battery will store excess solar during the day and feed it back into the grid during the evening peak. This 150 MWh capacity means the battery will be capable of covering the equivalent of the capital Nouméa’s power consumption for those three hours.

The battery will also serve as a network regulation tool, enabling rapid response to frequency and voltage variations, and as a grid-forming technology, helping to establish and restart the network if there is an outage.

“Akuo is delighted to have completed this project’s development and financing, within a sometimes-complex political context, and to now be in a position to initiate its construction,” said Bruno Bensasson, the Akuo group’s CEO.

“We are fully committed to this success: we know to what extent this storage battery will play a key role in strengthening the proportion of renewable energies in New Caledonia’s electricity mix.

“Its commissioning will help accelerate the production of green electricity to allow the mining industry’s transition to sustainable sources of energy. Our teams and their partners are already focused on giving their very best and bringing this ambitious project to fruition.”

If you would like to join more than 28,000 others and get the latest clean energy news delivered straight to your inbox, for free, please click here to subscribe to our free daily newsletter.