Renewable energy developer RES Australia is proposing to build what would be Australia’s biggest battery storage facility – up to 215MW – next to a new 180MW wind project north of Adelaide.
The proposal at the Twin Creek wind farm, made in a planning submission to the South Australia Planning Commission, would be bigger than the existing Tesla big battery, and a bigger installation planned for Whyalla by industrialist Sanjeev Gupta.
RES had initially proposed a 50MW battery but upgraded the potential size to 215MW.
It is becoming increasingly clear that South Australia, a world leader in the penetration of wind and solar in its grid, is rapidly becoming the world leader in storage.
As we also reported on Thursday, Infigen Energy is proposing to add a 25MW/52MW battery storage facility to its Lake Bonney wind farm, a new battery is about to be opened at the Wattle Point wind farm, and the new Lincoln Gap wind farm will also feature at least 10MW of battery storage.
A new 21MW/26MWh battery will be installed along with a new solar farm next to the Snowtown wind complex, numerous other battery storage facilities are proposed, including by Whyalla steel owner Sanjeev Gupta.
And there is the Aurora solar tower project with eight hours of molten salt storage, and a hydrogen storage hub at Crystal Brook, along with a new wind farm proposed by Neoen, the owners of Hornsdale and the existing Tesla big battery.
The $330 million Twin Creek wind farm project will be located on farm land near the village of Kapunda, about 90kms north of Adelaide.
RES is also building the 418MW Murra Warra wind farm in Victoria, where it has landed contracts with Telstra, ANZ and CC Amatil, and has also built the Ararat wind farm in Victoria and the Taralga wind farm in NSW.
The company says the combination of the excellent exposure to South Australia’s abundant wind resource, and a 2.0 kilometre distance buffer from wind turbines to non-involved dwellings, made Twin Creek, an ideal location for a renewable energy project.
It also says new generation, full inverter based wind turbine generators will be capable of providing services such as enhanced reactive capability, high levels of active power injection post fault recovery, and enhanced flexibility between wind speed and turbine output.
This would improve its Fast Frequency Response (FFR) relative to traditional doubly fed induction generators dominating the current wind fleet.
A decision from the SA Planning Commission is expected later this year.
