Labor’s emphatic election win in Western Australia sets the scene for one of the country’s most generous household battery rebate, but still with a mountain to claim to build enough wind and solar to allow the last of the state’s coal fired power generators to close by the end of the decade.
The victory by state premier Roger Cook was never really in doubt, and despite a state-wide two-party preferred swing of 11 per cent against Labor, the sheer scale of the rout from the previous election, and the subdued performance of the Liberal and National parties, means it will still have a commanding majority.
Results so far point to Labor winning at leat 41 of the 59 seat lower house, although success for The Greens means that they will likely have the balance of power in the upper house, which could be interesting as they try to force Labor’s hand on renewables and rein in its support for massive new fossil gas projects.
In the lead up to poll, Cook promised rebates of up to $5,000 per household on the main grid, or $7,500 for households on the regional Horizon Power grid, as part of a $387 million Residential Battery Scheme, which aims to underwrite more than 200 megawatt hours (MWh) of small-scale storage.
It has already done well with big batteries – with two of the country’s biggest, both in the coal centre of Collie, now under construction and, in the case of Neoen’s project, partly commissioned. All told, five big battery projects are being built and more are being invited to tender for government underwriting agreements.
The primary focus of these big batteries – and the household storage to be subsidised by the promised rebate – is to soak up excess rooftop solar in the middle of the day so it can be re-injected into the grid in the evening peaks.
This is particularly important in W.A.’s main grid, the South West Interconnected System, which is the world’s biggest isolated, with no other states or grid to draw from or export to should the need arise.
However, despite the big emphasis on battery storage, not much has been done in the way of new wind and solar projects, the bulk energy needed to replace the coal fired generators that are due to retire by the end of the decade, and not just in the evening peaks.
In the past five years – after a spate of activity in 2020 that broke an investment drought crafted by the previous Coalition government – not much in the way of new large scale wind and solar has been added to the grid – just the 76 MW Flat Rocks wind farm near Kojonup, and the 128 MW Cunderdin solar farm and battery.
Two more projects will join the grid in coming years – the 108 MW extension to the Warradarge wind farm, and the 105 MW Kings Rock wind project, but apart from a second 100 MW stage of the Flat Rocks wind farm, no other large scale additions are in view before 2030.
The list of “priority” projects quietly unveiled by state and federal ministers last Friday includes three wind projects in the SWIS – Neoen’s 200 MW Narrogin, Zephyr Energy’s 490 MW Parron, and Tilt Renewables’ 108 MW Waddi Waddi wind projects – and just one transmission line, the Clean Energy Link – North project..
Another two huge wind and solar hybrids, and four other transmission projects, are also listed in the priority list but – given that they will largely be driven by the huge mining customers – their fate lies in different hands.
The federal government, meanwhile, has just launched a new consultation into the design of a combined renewable and dispatchable capacity auction under the auspices of the federal Capacity Investment Scheme.
The CIS is seeking 23 GW of new wind and solar capacity, and at leat 9 GW (36 GWh) of battery storage, but the design in W.A. is complicated by the fact that its grid has different market rules, most notably a capacity mechanism that is already in place.
The state and federal governments agreed last year to aim to deliver more than 6 terawatt hours of new wind and solar by the end of the decade, but not much has been seen to date.
WA has long promised to be a renewable energy powerhouse, and a survey completed last year found that there could be demand for more than 50 GW of new wind and solar capacity on the main grid by 2050 from industries keen for low cost green power.
That did not include some of the massive wind and solar projects targeted at renewable hydrogen and green ammonia, including the potential 70 GW Western green energy hub, and the 26 GW Australian Renewable Energy Hub.
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