Infigen says Lake Bonney battery now in full production

Infigen Energy says its Lake Bonney battery is now in full production, taking the number of grid-scale batteries in the state to three, and the total in the main grid to five.

The 20MW/52MWh battery – made with Tesla Powerpacks – is situated next to Infigen’s Lake Bonney wind farm, which total 275MW across three projects.

It will join the original Tesla big battery at the Hornsdale Power Reserve (100MW/129MWh) and the Dalrymple North battery (30MW/8MWh) next to the Wattle Point wind farm, adding valuable storage options to a grid now dominated by wind and solar, and likely to head to “net 100 per cent renewables” by 2030.

The Lake Bonney battery had been expected to enter full service earlier this year, but like most other new projects in Australia has experienced commissioning delays.

The $38 million battery will source revenues from the FCAS market and storage and arbitrage from the neighbouring wind farms,  where there is incentive to store some power in the battery if the prices are low, and sell later at higher prices.

It will also increase Infigen’s ability to provide “firm” electricity supply contracts to commercial and industrial customers. This graph below, courtesy of the Climate and Energy College and their OpenNem.org.au resource, shows the regular activity so far this month.

Infigen had a good month in November for wind generation, up 34 per cent over the same month in 2018 to 193,000 gigawatt hours. So far for the year to date, production is up 15 per cent, mostly due to the beginning of production at the Bodangora wind farm.

A fourth battery in South Australia, a 10MW/10MWh battery installation at  Lincoln Gap wind farm is set to joint the grid in the new year, while  Sanjeev Gupta’s Simec Zen Energy plans a bigger 135MW battery at Port Augusta and Tilt Renewables is also considering a 20MW/40MWh battery at its Snowtown wind park.

Alinta has also signed up to a huge solar and battery park., and the Tesla big battery is to get bigger, growing 50 per cent as part of a new plan to provide grid inertia, as well as the arbitrage, FCAS and system back-up services it currently provides.