Six months overdue, Victoria battery storage tender announcement still “imminent”

The winners of Victoria’s 100MWh battery storage tender were set to be announced “very soon”, the state government has assured, more than six months after the scheme’s original deadline of August 2017.

Speaking at the ABB Customer World conference in Melbourne on Thursday, state energy minister Lily D’Ambrosio said her department was “not far away” from announcing the successful tenderers for two large-scale battery storage installations in the west of the state.

As we have reported, the two projects – at a minimum 20MW each and producing a combined 100MWh – were originally supposed to be online by January 1, as part of an effort to shore up the Victorian grid through the summer.

But despite attracting more than 100 proposals – or perhaps, in part, because of the sheer volume of tenders – the announcement of the the result has been long delayed.

In comments during a keynote address, D’Ambrosio said the energy storage tender was a key component of the state’s renewable energy strategy, and of meeting its legislated renewable energy targets of 25 per cent by 2020 and 40 per cent by 2025.

“These projects are very important,” the minister told the conference, “and we are not far away from announcing the successful tenderers from that project.”

And when pushed for a date: “Very imminent. Very, very, soon,” she said.

D’Ambrosio said that the projects would be installed in western Victoria, because that was where the grid needed to build up its resilience.

“So we need to be smarter about where these investments are located, so that we strategically help to facilitate the deployment of more generation capacity in those areas that are most favourable, either through very strong wind resources, or strong solar resources,” she said.