Neoen detaches big battery project from large wind farm development in central Queensland

Neoen has detached its Mount Hopeful battery from the wind project that surrounds it, and is now asking the regional council to approve it separately. 

The 350 megawatt wind project just outside Gladstone has all government approvals but is still in the final development phase, the developer says. 

Last week it asked the Rockhampton Regional Council to approve a standalone battery development, still with four hours of storage but slightly bigger at up to 600 megawatts (MW).

The battery has a proposed start year of 2028 for the first stage and will straddle Powerlink’s Bouldercombe to Larcom Creek 275 kilovolt (kV) power line reinforcement project. 

Neoen shifted the battery, a synchronous condenser, and transformers 500 metres to avoid federally protected environmental features, it said in a report sent to the Queensland State Assessment and Referral Agency (SARA).

What Neoen hasn’t revealed is why it’s detached the battery from the wind project, although planning delays at the broader Mount Hopeful project and for wind proposals generally could hold the answer.

Construction on the original Mount Hopeful wind and battery project was scheduled to start in the second half of 2023, but federal EPBC approval didn’t come through until a year later.

That approval came with a range of conditions to protect the southern and central greater glider, southern yellow-bellied glider, koala and northern quoll.

In the SARA documents dated April this year, Neoen said it expected to start work on both battery and wind sites this month with construction now taking 40 months instead of 22-28 months.

These kinds of delays are plaguing wind projects across the country, and it’s leading some  wind-focused developers shift to batteries and even solar-battery hybrids. 

Neoen is still focused on both, with 20 battery projects and 14 onshore wind projects in development, construction or commissioning today, according to RenewMap.

Mount Hopeful is its last remaining wind project yet to be developed in the sunshine state.

And given the Queensland government’s antipathy towards wind projects, separating contentious from uncontroversial technologies could be a sound strategy. 

The state government ment cancelled the $1 billion Moonlight Range project in May and effectively killed the 1.2 GW Forest Wind project in September, and has called in two other big projects.

Neoen may have some protection however, as it signed a 15-year power purchase agreement for the Mount Hopeful project with state-owned Stanwell Corporation in 2022. 

Stanwell will buy 65 per cent of the generation capacity from the project, or 215 MW.