South Australia’s biggest battery achieves key registration and licence approvals

Neoen’s Blyth battery, which will soon be the biggest battery project in South Australia, has been registered in the Australian Energy Market Operator’s Market Management System, paving the way for testing and commissioning.

The battery, which is being built by Neoen at the same time as the state’s biggest wind project to date, the 412MW Goyder South wind farm near Burra, reached financial close in February, closely followed by the first concrete pours and delivery of battery components later that month.

Debt financing for the two projects, located 150km apart in the mid-north region of South Australia, was provided by a group of five lenders including the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, KfW IPEX-Bank, ING, Mizuho and Westpac.

The latest milestone for the 238.5 MW / 477 MWh big battery was marked on LinkedIn on Tuesday by Geoff Eldridge from Global Power Energy.

According to Eldridge, the Blyth BESS is the second new battery to be registered as a Bidirectional Unit (BDU), allowing it to both charge and discharge energy to support the grid and provide ancillary services, enhancing overall system flexibility.

The Rangebank battery in Victoria achieved a similar milestone last week, and earlier this year the Blyth battery was granted its generation licence from the state energy regulator, ESCOSA.

The Blyth battery’s main reason for being is to provide “24/7 power” to the country’s biggest copper mine, BHP’s Olympic Dam – power that will be almost entirely sourced from the first stage of the Goyder South wind project.

The project is also likely to be a prominent player in the grid services market and the growing demand for energy arbitrage, taking advantage of market volatility and excess wind and solar to store for later use.

Its construction was backed by $17 million from Arena’s Advancing Renewables Program for its role in enhanciong grid stability through innovative technologies like grid-forming inverters.

Please see Renew Economy’s Big Battery Storage Map for more information.