The rapidly emerging renewables and storage developer TagEnergy is to accelerate plans for a major renewable energy hub in far north Queensland after securing one of the winning positions in the Australian Renewable Energy Agency battery tender.
TagEnergy is to built a 300MW/600MWh battery at Mount Fox near Townsville after being one of the eight big batteries chosen in the new funding round that is focused on advanced grid forming inverters that can mimic the grid services normally provided by coal, gas and hydro power stations.
See: Australia backs $2.7bn of big batteries to narrow gap to 100 pct renewables
The Mount Fox renewable energy hub will also include a wind farm, including up to 57 turbines and likely to have a rated capacity of more than 400MW.
The north Queensland region is one of the weakest parts of the grid, but is also the centre of numerous proposed big renewable developments, including the recently unveiled north Queensland “super hub” by Andrew Forrest’s Squadron Energy and the eastern link of the Copperstring transmission link to Mt Isa.
TagEnergy was only formed in 2019 and already has more than 4GW of projects in the pipeline in Australia, France, Portugal and the UK. It is led by Franck Woitiez, the former head of Neoen Australia and it has many of the same financial backers.
Last month it achieved financial close of the first 756MW stage of the Golden Plains wind farm in Victoria – already the biggest in Victoria – and which ultimately be the twice the size and have a 400MWh big battery added to the facility.
It only recently completed its first project, the now fully-operational 20MW/40MWh Hawkers Hill battery near Shaftesbury in Dorset, England.
“TagEnergy welcomes Arena’s support as we head towards financial close on what will be one of the largest battery systems in Australia once built,” said Andrew Riggs, TagEnergy managing partner in Australia.
“We look forward to continuing to work with ARENA as we continue to innovate and deliver next-gen grid scale battery technology that will further extend Australia’s capabilities around large scale batteries,” Mr Riggs said.
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