South Australia’s biggest battery hits construction milestone two weeks ahead of schedule

Neoen Australia’s 238.5 MW, two-hour Blyth Battery in South Australia, which will seize the title of the state’s biggest battery once up and running, has reached mechanical completion two weeks ahead of schedule.

NHOA Energy, which is delivering the project for Neoen alongside Elecnor Australia, announced the “major milestone” on LinkedIn on Tuesday, reporting that the project’s 1,280 battery cabinets and “cutting-edge systems” have been successfully installed and cold commissioned.

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.

“We’re now full steam ahead with hold point testing alongside Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) and ElectraNet,” the NHOA LinkedIn post says this week.

“This project highlights the power of renewable energy paired with advanced storage, driving the future of Australia’s baseload power supply, confirming NHOA Energy’s role as a leader in the global energy transition.”

The 477 MWh Blyth battery will be used to ensure delivery of 70MW of “24/7 power” to the country’s biggest copper mine, BHP’s Olympic Dam, almost entirely sourced from the first stage of the massive Goyder South wind project.

The news comes a day after Neoen completed the formal opening of the first stage of what will be the biggest battery in the country, the 560 MW, 2240 MWh Collie battery in Western Australia.

Storage specialist NHOA says the “landmark” Blyth BESS is being fitted with grid-forming inverter technology, allowing it to provide essential system stability services traditionally provided by gas and coal power plants.

And in August, the Blyth BESS became the second battery in Australia to be registered by the energy market operator, AEMO, 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.

It’s a first-of-its-type contract for Neoen, and could be a blueprint for the future – enabling it to satisfy the needs of big corporate consumers, and unlocking the revenue needed to build some of the massive renewable and storage projects in its pipeline.

Former Neoen Australia managing director Louis De Sambucy in 2022 described the Blyth Battery as a critical first project for what will be an important equation for big corporate customers going forward – the provision of “firm” renewable output from a single provider.

“This is a first for us and it is made possible because Goyder is a very good project with a very high capacity factor, and when we add to that the battery and our hedging capacity, it enables us to deliver something much closer to what customers are looking for, high renewables content and close to the load,” de Sambucy said at the time.

“It validates our strategy of combining our assets. It is much closer to what the customer is requesting. In this case it is wind and storage, in the future it could be solar and storage, and a combination of wind and solar, and wind, solar and storage.”

Once complete, the Blyth Battery will take over from the 150 MW / 194 MWh Hornsdale Power Reserve, also built by Neoen, as the biggest in the state.

Neoen has also advanced plans for what would be among the biggest battery project in any of Australia’s main grids – a 3,600 megawatt hour (MWh) project being proposed for Goyder North, along with an adjoining 1,000 megawatt (MW) wind project, north of Burra – separate to the Goyder South project.