Sacked contractors sued over missing components for delayed big battery storage project

Alinta Energy has sued the former contractors for its Wagerup big battery project in Western Australia, over missing components of the delayed $182 million project.

The energy giant, which owns the Loy Yang B coal fired power station, and has started work on Reeves Plains, one of the biggest battery projects in South Australia, has launched legal proceedings in the Supreme Court in Perth against China-based Shanghai Electric Power Deisgn Institute and the Perth-based Sunterra Energy.

According to reports in The West Australian newspaper and BusinessNews, Alinta is seeking $110 million of missing equipment, including cables, battery units and inverters that it says are being withheld by the two former contractors.

Alinta declined to comment on the reports, but noted that it ended the contracts with Shanghai Electric Power Design Institute Sunterra in September, and awarded a $50 million contract to ASX-listed GenusPlus Group to finish the job.

“We remain focused on achieving the most timely and effective path forward for completion of the facility, and have already commenced work with locally based contractor GenusPlus Group,” it said at the time.

The 100 MW, 200 MWh battery Wagerup began construction in late 2023 and was originally supposed to start commissioning in late 2024 and to be completed by early this year.

Like other big batteries in Western Australia, it was due on October 1 to start a “solar soaker” contract with the Australian Energy Market Operator to store excess rooftop solar output in the middle of the day and feed it back into the grid in the evening.

Alinta built its first big battery on the remote Pilbara grid, next to the Mt Newman gas fired power station that supplies some of the biggest iron ore mines in the north of the state.

That battery, sized at 30 MW and 11 MWh, was the first of its kind and designed only to allow Alinta to switch off backup gas generators at Mt Newman, but the company said it paid for itself in just four years. That business has since been sold to APA.

The Reeves Plains project, initially sized at 250 MW and 1,000 MWh, is due to be completed in 2028, and is being built by GenusPlus with batteries provided by China’s CATL, which also feature in the Kwinana and Collie batteries in Western Australia, and the Supernode battery in Queensland, destined to be the country’s biggest.

See: Australia’s 10 biggest battery storage projects – and what they are paid to do

The Reeves Plains project recently secured an underwriting agreement under the federal government’s Capacity Investment Scheme. It proposes a second stage of the same dimensions and Alinta announced last year that it planned to build a bigger second stage battery at Wagerup, due for completion in late 2027.

See also: Big Battery Storage Map of Australia for more information.

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