Neoen finds another game changing use and a new frontier for a very big battery

You have to hand it to Neoen Australia. Each time it has installed a big battery in Australia it has effectively changed the rules of the game, and pushed the technology into new frontiers.

The latest innovation is the newly announced Blyth battery, which will be used to ensure delivery of “24/7 power” to the country’s biggest copper mine, BHP’s Olympic Dam, almost entirely sourced from the first stage of the massive Goyder South wind project.

It’s a first-of-its-type contract for Neoen, and will could be a blueprint for the future – enabling it to satisfy the needs of big corporate consumers, and unlocking the revenue needs to build some of the massive renewable and storage projects in its pipeline.

It’s just the latest in a series of ground-breaking battery storage projects that has pushed the boundaries of the technology, and invited customers, developers and market operators to think differently about the future of the grid.

First there was the original Tesla big battery, officially known as the Hornsdale Power Reserve (pictured above), which was the biggest in the world when connected in 2017 and single-handedly changed the nature of frequency control and ancillary services markets, smashing a cosy gas cartel along the way.

Hornsdale changed the nature of grid services markets

The Hornsdale Power Reserve is now doing the same with advanced inverters, where the provision of synthetic inertia and system strength will relegate South Australia’s remaining gas generators further into the back rows.

In Geelong, Neoen built the Victoria Big Battery, now the biggest in Australia at 300MW/450MWh, with a landmark contract with the Australian Energy Market Operator to lift the capacity of the main transmission link between NSW and Victoria.

The NSW government is adopting a similar strategy with the Waratah Super Battery on the central cost that will also act as a “shock absorber” and lift the capacity of the networks delivering into the state’s major load centres, a critical addition when the Eraring coal generator is closed in late 2025.

A less known battery project is the 20/34MWh Bulgana battery in Victoria, next to a 180MW wind farm of the same name. It was supposed to help supply what would have been the country’s largest greenhouse in a flip from using gas for warming to renewables, but that part of the deal fell through.

It is, though, the first battery in the country to work at this scale as an effective behind the meter installation. It’s so far behind the meter that only Neoen knows what it is doing, and how effective it is.

Blyth will be one of longest duration batteries in Australia

The 300MW Blyth battery will likely be sized at up to 800MWh, which will be one of the longest duration batteries installed in Australia.

Others battery project developers have talked about four hours of storage, but are focusing on one or two hours of storage for the initial project stages as they wait for the arbitrage market to develop).

Neoen Australia CEO Louis de Sambucy says supporting the wind output from Goyder for the client at BHP will be the primary role of Blyth, but not its only role.

“Batteries can do many things,” de Sambucy tells RenewEconomy in an interview. “This particular project is about energy, but they (batteries) are also quite good at delivering grid services, and they will be more important in the future.”

The numbers for the BHP deal are intriguing. Neoen is delivering 70MW of “baseload” power to Olympic Dam, which will equate to around half of the mine’s needs and account for around half of the initial 412MW capacity of the Goyder South stage 1 project.

De Sambucy says this will be more than enough to deliver the equivalent of the contract’s electricity consumption – equivalent to 600GWh a year – and the role of the battery will be to smooth out that production to deliver the electricity as BHP requires it, 24/7.

First project to provide “baseload” renewable power supply

The Blyth battery, depending on its final specifications, will also be “oversized” for the BHP contract and will also be able to do other things in the market, including providing grid services and some arbitrage.

De Sambucy sees it as a critical first project for what will be an important equation for big corporate customers going forward – the provision of “firm” renewable output from a single provider.

“This is a first for us and it is made possible because Goyder is a very good project with a very high capacity factor, and when we add to that the battery and our hedging capacity, it enables us to deliver something much closer to what customers are looking for, high renewables content and close to the load.

“It validates our strategy of combining our assets. It is much closer to what the customer is requesting. In this case it is wind and storage, in the future it could be solar and storage, and a combination of wind and solar, and wind, solar and storage.

Neoen has other battery storage projects, including the 100MW/200MWh Capital big battery in Canberra currently under construction that makes up part of its contract with the ACT government that also underpinned stage 1 of the Goyder wind farm. That battery project is due to be completed in the middle of 2023.

More battery projects in the pipeline

Other battery projects could also be built at the 400MW Western Downs solar farm, which will be the biggest solar farm in the country when completed early next year, and its 500MW/1000MWh Great Western battery project near the site of the closed Wallerawang coal power station near Lithgow in NSW.

In all it has more than 1.1GW of wind, solar and storage under construction, including the 157MW Kaban wind project which is now going through its initial commissions phase, and a much bigger pipeline.

Its flagship project remains Goyder South, which could have as much as 1200MW of wind capacity, 600MW of solar, and its own battery sized at up to 1800MWh. “We are very keen to look at the next stage of Goyder and get on with the development.”

De Sambucy says corporate demand will be the key, now that renewable energy developers have shown they have the tools to deliver what they need.

“The fact is we are able to propose to customers a load shape that is closer to usage in terms of providing electricity when they need it, such as big industrial processes – it could be baseload, it could be other shapes – and we can do that by combining assets and doing something smart.

See also RenewEconomy’s Big Battery Storage Map of Australia