Small boost to giga-scale plans as NSW big battery wins state planning approval

One of Potentia Energy’s newest purchases will start construction later this year, after the $183 million Ridgey Creek battery won planning consent in New South Wales (NSW).

The 130 megawatt (MW), 260 MWh BESS will be next door to Transgrid’s Parkes substation and is also directly adjacent to two small operating solar farms and a major proposed industrial zone.

The project will deliver $680,000 to the community via a voluntary planning agreement, and hire 50 people during construction. 

Potentia only bought the Ridgey Creek BESS earlier this year from a developer named Atria Energy. It plans for operations to start in 2027. 

Had long-distance objectors managed to rally another nine submissions, that timeline might have looked a little different.

The project slipped under the 50 objections cap which would have seen it head to the Independent Planning Commission (IPC) for another look.

It received 43 public submissions, with 36 objections from the general public although none from people living within 100km of the project, and another five objections from special interest groups including one called ‘Save our Surroundings’.

The project hasn’t gone through the federal environmental approvals process, which many developers now do out of an abundance of caution. But the farmland site meant it won’t impact any nationally important flora or fauna and the NSW authorities also decided it would have minimal impact on biodiversity values. 

The town isn’t in any of NSW’s declared renewable energy zones, but is still in a clean energy hub and the state government is planning for it to be home to a major national transport hub.

Surrounding Parkes are 244MW of operating solar farms and another 321MW under construction or in development. 

Directly next door are the 55MW Parkes and the 68.7MW Goonumbla solar farms, and four paddocks away is the under-construction 80MW Quorn Park solar farm which will come with its own 20MW BESS – and which Potentia also owns.

And Parkes is the only junction of Australia’s two major east coast rail networks, the Inland Rail from Brisbane and the Trans-Australian Railway that heads west to Adelaide and beyond. 

Potentia Energy is the recently rebranded joint venture of Italian energy giant giant Enel Green Power and its Japanese partner Inpex, and is the vehicle through which the duo plan to develop some 7 gigawatts (GW) of projects.

It has been buying up assets since the rebrand.

In addition to the purchase from Atria, it closed a deal in February for a 1.2 GW portfolio including more than 700 MW of operating wind and solar assets and 460 MW of assets in late stage development, including two battery storage projects and a wind project.

That acquisition was from Dutch-based funds manager CVC DIF and Australian super fund CBus in the middle of last year. It includes an 80 per cent stake in Bright Energy, which operates in the Western Australian market.