Plans advanced for Australia’s largest battery, with eight times more storage than current biggest

Neoen Australia has advanced plans for what would be the biggest battery project in any of Australia’s main grids – a 3,600 megawatt hour (MWh) proposal that would have eight times more storage than the current holder of the biggest battery title.

The project is being proposed at Goyder North, along with an adjoining 1,000 megawatt (MW) wind project, north of Burra in South Australia.

It is separate to the neighbouring Goyder South project, which could combine 1,200 MW of wind, 600 MW of solar and 900 MW, 1800 MWh of battery storage, and where a 412 MW first wind stage is already being built.

The scale of battery storage projects in Australia is growing rapidly. The current titleholder of the biggest fully commissioned battery in the country is the 300 MW, 450 MWh Victoria Big battery near Geelong, which was also built by Neoen.

That project will soon be overtaken – first by the 850 MW, 1680 MWh Waratah Super Battery in NSW, which will have the biggest connection point of any other generator or storage unit in the country when complete – and then by a series of three 2,000 MWh batteries that are also under construction.

The biggest of these is the 560 MW, 2,240 MWh Collie battery – yet another project being built by Neoen – although there are a number of new pretenders to the throne, should they be built, including a newly unveiled 2,500 MWh battery project in Portland by Pacific Green, and a 2,600 MWh battery in Kemmerton, Western Australia, by Trina Solar.

The Goyder North project will trump the lot. Of course, a lot could happen between now and the years that it will take to bring the project to fruition, including on technology advances and market conditions.

But the sweet spot being targeted now by Neoen is the four-hour storage market, and in South Australia that is needed because of the growing impact of rooftop solar – already producing more than state demand at times – and because the state has a target of reached 100 per cent net renewables by 2030.

That will require a lot of renewable output to be either exported, including via the new transmission line to NSW, or stored – or soaked up by new industries such as green hydrogen and green iron and steel projects.

Neoen says the Goyder region has some of the best wind and solar resources in Australia, and described the overall Goyder Renewable Zone as one of the most ambitious renewable energy developments proposed in the country.

“It is ideally located to complement Project EnergyConnect, a large interconnector to New South Wales currently under
construction by ElectraNet and TransGrid and will make a major contribution to servicing the substantial
increase in South Australian energy demand forecast by ElectraNet,” it says in its planning

” In addition to providing low-cost renewable energy, the addition of batteries to the facility will increase stability in the grid as well as reducing volatility and reliance on gas generation within the energy market.”

Neoen says the project would be built on privately owned land that is “largely agricultural including marginal grazing for sheep”, and it contemplates up to 135 wind turbines, with a maximum hub height of 160m, a maximum blade length of 90m, and an overall maximum height (tip height) of 240m.

The battery component would be built in three stages.

“Despite this significant deployment of low-cost energy production, South Australians have not seen the
benefits of this transition flow through in the form of reduced residential power bills,” the company notes.

“This is largely due to the state’s reliance on gas generation to provide system stability services and fill in gaps in generation when the renewable generation fleet is not generating.

“The addition of more renewable generation in combination with large scale batteries will reduce the amount of time that gas generators operate, providing the lowest cost firm energy supply.”