New gigawatt scale battery proposed for key transmission crossroads

Spanish renewable and battery storage developer X-Elio has unveiled plans for a gigawatt-scale battery located near Marulan in the southern highlands of NSW, at the junction of several key transmission lines.

The 300 MW, 1,200 MWh Canyonleigh project has entered the pipeline of projects seeking approval under the federal government’s EPBC Act, and would be located a few kilometres from Spark Renewables’ Wattle Creek project that could combine a 265 MW solar farm with an even bigger 800 MW, 1,600 MWh battery.

Both projects will seek to plug into the existing Marulan sub station that sits at the intersection of several 330 kV and 132 kV transmission lines. The proposed 500kV Humelink transmission line will be located to the north.

The surrounding rural area is already partly industrialised with three quarries, a limestone mine and a coal mine in the vicinity, and the Canyonleigh site is the first of dozens of renewable energy projects cascading down towards the ACT from the Illawarra coastline. 

One of these is X-Elio’s proposed Willavale Park Renewable Energy project, which includes a 300MW, 600MWh BESS next to a 72MW solar farm.

EnergyAustralia has also proposed a 700 MW peaking gas plant, and although it asked for and received its third planning extension late last year, the project has been in the development pipeline since 2007 and the utility says it is exploring other uses for the land.

X-Elio – owned by Brookfield which also now owns Neoen, is seeking approval to locate the battery on a 10 hectare footprint and connect to the existing substation which is about 500m away.

The full 98 hectare site is in the NSW South Eastern Highlands IBRA Bioregion and Bungonia IBRA Subregion and in an area with pockets of increasingly vulnerable native woodlands.

Box gum woodlands are on the site and are now classified as critically endangered, along with several native grasslands.  Gang-gang cockatoos have also been seen on the site. 

X-Elio has a significant portfolio in Australia. In January it sent a 720MW solar farm and 720MW/2,880MWh called the North Burnett Renewable Energy Hub near Gladstone in Queensland into the EPBC process.  

In May last year it was for a 350 MW solar farm and 120 MW, two-hour big battery in Queensland’s Western Downs region, and in October it said it would add a nearly 150MW, two-hour battery to its 200MW Blue Grass solar farm also in Queensland’s Western Downs.