Wandoan big battery. Image Supplied
Queensland’s biggest battery – the 100MW/150MWh Wandoan South battery – is now in full commercial operations after nearly a year of testing on the grid.
Battery owner Vena Energy announced the milestone on Wednesday, along with utility giant AGL Energy which will now dispatch the battery on a day-to-day basis under a long term contract.
The Wandoan South battery – connected to the grid for the first time in September last year before entering a lengthy commissioning process – is the first big battery on the grid in the country’s most coal dependent grid, although some smaller installations – a Lakeland and Kennedy – have been installed in recent years.
Owen Sela, the head of Vena Energy Australia, said reaching operational status for the Wandoan South battery is a “transformative milestone” for both Vena Energy and Australia’s renewable energy future.
“We believe that energy storage is the key to addressing the intermittency of renewable energy, and the Wandoan South BESS will play a pivotal role in the acceleration of Australia’s green energy transformation and contributing to climate change mitigation,” he said.
“With the largest utility-scale battery in Queensland now operational, it will encourage more renewable energy generation and help manage the supply and demand balance in the national electricity grid.”
It will also play a key role in holding the state grid together amid rapid changes in the share of renewables, particularly solar, and the increasing problems faced by the state’s ageing coal grid.
The state government last year announced a “battery blitz” after the explosion at the Callide coal fired power station put the grid at risk and showed just how dependent the state’s grid was on batteries several thousand kilometres away.
Genex is building the 50MW/100MW Bouldercombe battery near Rockhampton, while state utilities CS Energy and Stanwell have also announced a range of battery proposals. Many are being built at or near existing coal fired power stations to take advantage of the existing infrastructure.
See RenewEconomy’s Big Battery Storage Map of Australia
AGL has a 15-year contract for the dispatch rights to the battery, part of a growing trend of big utilities and battery storage developers. AGL has a similar arrangement at Dalrymple North in South Australia, while EnergyAustralia has the same for the Gannawarra and Ballarat batteries in Victoria, and others in the pipeline.
“During the day when renewables are online, the Wandoan South BESS is able to store this energy and then release it when the sun isn’t shining, the wind isn’t blowing, or other forms of generation are offline,” AGL chief operating officer Markes Brokhof said.
“This is important for providing security to the energy market and avoiding system constraints, particularly in areas like the Darling Downs with a large local load and the potential for a high renewable energy build over the coming decade.”
AGL says it will be able to use the battery to leverage excess solar generation in Queensland, and fill in some of the gaps when its 465MW Cooper’s Gap wind farm sun Queensland is not generating.
Vena Energy is also about to begin construction of a new big battery in South Australia, a 41.5MW/41.5MWh facility at Tailem Bend, where it has also begin building the second 87MW stage of the Tailem Bend solar farm, next to the existing 95MW solar plant.
AGL is also building the 200MW Torrens Island battery near Adelaide, at the site of its ageing gas generators, that will initially have one hour storage but could be expanded to four hours as storage markets evolve in that state.
AGL is also planning big batteries at the sites of its Loy Yang A coal fired power station and the Liddell coal generator in NSW which is due to close early next year.
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