Spanish energy giant in landmark solar and battery project in Australia

Spanish energy giant Naturgy has made its first move into the Australian solar market with the purchase of what will be a landmark solar and battery storage hybrid project.

Naturgy has bought the Cunderdin solar and battery project in Western Australia, which will be country’s first big “dc-coupled” solar battery at this scale, with the focus on shifting solar into the evening peak rather than providing frequency and other grid support services.

The “dc-coupled” battery means it will not be connected to the grid, and will instead focus on storing the output of the 100MW solar farm to shift it to times of higher prices. It will have a big battery to do that – 50MW and four hours of storage, or 220MWh, and will be supported by the capacity payments available in the WA market.

This represents a big shift in the way solar and storage projects are combined in the Australian market. All the batteries co-located with solar or wind farms in Australia have operated as separate units, and have focused on the grid services market, which needs only around one or two hours of storage.

The Cunderdin project is due to start construction in the fourth quarter and be complete in early 2024 and will operate on a merchant basis.

The project was developed by the Perth-based Sun Bred Power, and the deal was finally consumed after many years of false starts. Ray Wills, the chairman of Sun Bred, says he is pleased that the project has finally been delivered to a successful builder.

“It is so important that this project will now get built and on commercial merit,” he told RenewEconomy.

Naturgy said in a statement the big battery – 55MW, 220MWh – will give it maximum flexibility to the project and ensure it can deliver into the local grid in peak demand periods and take advantage of the WA market’s capacity payment system.

It says it will use a dc-coupled battery that will improve energy conversion efficiencies and deliver lower solar-plus-storage costs in comparison with the conventional AC-coupled facilities.

The battery system will be manufactured and supplied by Sungrow, its first mandate at this scale in Australia.

It is the latest in a string of new battery proposals that include moving into new areas of the market – including long duration (up to eight hours storage), proposed by Akaysha Energy, now backed by Blackrock, and “virtual synchronous machines”, delivering the same grid services as big fossil fuel generators.

See: BlackRock to push battery limits and new markets with eight hour storage and inertia

Naturgy already has a significant portfolio of wind farms in Australia, through its subsidiary Global Power Generation, which is partly owned by the Kuwait Investment Authority, and is also building a 10MW/20MWh battery in Canberra as part of a deal with the ACT government.

Naturgy says Australia is one of its key markets, and it plans to lift the capacity of the GPG portfolio in Australia from the current 276MW nearly 10-fold over the next three years to 2.2GW.

Its completed projects include the 96MW Crookwell 2 wind farm in NSW, and the 180MW Berrybank 1 wind farm in Victoria, with another 109MW in the Berrybank 2 wind farm currently under commissioning. That project has a contract with the ACT government that also includes the 10MW, two hour battery in Canberra.

It has another 630MW of wind projects that have power purchase agreements that are currently under construction of about to be, including the Ryan Corner, Hawkesdale, Crookwell 3 and Paling Yards wind farms. It has another 417MW of projects under development in Victoria.

The Australian plans are part of a global strategy to spend €14 billion over the next three years lifting its global renewables portfolio from 5.2GW to 14GW.

See RenewEconomy’s Big Battery Storage Map of Australia and the Large Scale Solar Farm Map of Australia