Rise of the “big orange blob”: Australia’s biggest batteries change the game in its largest isolated grid

The extent to which Australia’s two biggest operating batteries have changed the game in the country’s biggest isolated grid have been highlighted in a presentation by one of Western Australia’s most senior energy officials.

Jai Thomas, the co-ordinator of energy at Energy Policy WA, last week noted the addition of at least four big batteries W.A.’s main grid, including the two biggest in Collie, is changing the way energy is used in the power system.

“In three short summers we have seem the Big Orange Blob (see graph below) become a major contributor to meeting peak demand, a low-load winner, an ESS (energy storage) provider, a flexible ramper and an unforeseen-gap gap-filler,” he wrote later in comments posted to his LinkedIn account

“Going from 0% to up to 36% of an interval in three short years is a major technological shift in the system underpinned by utility batteries and a true WA success story,” Thomas wrote.

“The next major challenge will be accounting for small scale batteries contribution to the Big Orange Blob, with over 13,000 now installed under the WA Government’s residential battery scheme, and growing each day.”

As the first graph illustrates, batteries could not be seen on W.A.’s main grid as recently as November, 2023, before the completion of the first utilities scale battery (100 MW and 200 MWh) at Kwinana.

Since then, another three major batteries have been added to the grid. A 200 MW, 900 MWh facility at Kwinana, Neoen’s 560 MW, 2,240 MW battery at Collie, and Synergy’s newly completed (and uprated) 500 MW, 2,400 MWh battery in the same town.

Another half a dozen other big batteries are under construction or in advanced planning – including at Merredin, Wagerup, Muchea and Waroona – but the following graphs illustrate just how the game has already been changed.

The graph above shows the charging (in yellow) and discharging (orange) on two key peak demand days in 2023 and 2026.

The next graph above illustrates the growing share of demand in the grid at peak demand – up to a record 36 per cent that was reached on January 10 this year.

And each of the top 20 daily maximum contribution records have occurred since late December, when the Synergy Collie battery came online, Thomas notes.

But the most interesting aspect of this transition is revealed in the next graph – how the big batteries have changed the pricing dynamics on the W.A. grid in such a short time frame.

Most noticeable is the virtual elimination of prices at the price floor since the growth of big batteries, and then the steep reduction in the number of maximum price events – this in a market that also features a capacity mechanism that adds to battery revenue.

Thomas tells Renew Economy that the volatility is expected to be further reduced as more batteries come online, along with the addition of yet more household and business batteries installed behind the meter.

All the W.A. needs now is a lot more focus on new wind and solar to replace more of the bulk energy currently delivered by fossil fuels. It is a little ironic – just a few years ago the big concern was that storage would come too slowly to support variable renewables.

It’s now getting to the stage where the reverse is true. In W.A., the batteries are being built in good time and waiting for the wind and solar to follow. In the eastern states, we are facing a similar issue as the big utilities focus on battery storage (to protect their trading positions), but not so quick on bulk renewables.

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