MPower ready to start work on integrated solar and battery project in South Australia

Small-scale renewables and storage specialist Mpower says is ready to start work on its mini 5 megawatt (MW) solar farm and 5MW/10MWh battery in Kadina, South Australia, after obtaining regulatory approval.

SA Power Networks agreed in October to let the project connect to the grid, which will allow the project to sell power but also cash in on low prices or the state’s multiple negative power pricing events by charging the battery during those times.

MPower plans to have batteries at all of its sites and use its in-house control system to enable them to operate in three modes: supporting the grid during times of peak demand, operate as an ‘island’ when the main grid is down, and offer black start services to help the grid relaunch after a complete blackout.

New rule kicks-off hybrid projects

In a statement today, Mpower said the whole project was also designed to take advantage of the new Integrated Resource Provider (IRP) category, set up in late 2021, which allows hybrid energy projects to register as one entity rather than splitting the energy generation and storage elements of a single project.

The rule change was recognition by the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC) that battery storage is an increasingly common feature of renewable energy projects, and that it’s smarter to allow the whole project to connect at one point to the grid — rather than forcing them into two projects with two connections.

MPower expects to start work on the project this year.

Rapid expansion of small-scale projects

The company spent the last six months buying new projects to add to its pipeline.

It bought the 5MW Faraday Renewable Energy Project in central Victoria in January, a “shovel ready” project intended to produce more than 11,500MWh of electricity each year, enough to power in excess of 1,500 homes.

And in August it bought the operational 10.8MWac solar farm and 1.4MWac/5.3MWh battery Lakeland project, located in Cooktown Shire in northern Queensland. It is development that launched in 2017 to test the concept of using different battery modes across different market settings such as PV and grid support, in a remote “fringe-of-grid” location.