The mega battery projects jockeying for position in renewable zones that might be too small

It seems everything is getting bigger in the renewable and storage industry. This week, we reported on news that the country’s biggest renewable energy project has now jumped in size by nearly half – from an already eye watering 50 gigawatts to an improbable 70 gigawatts – equivalent to the country’s entire main grid!

Projects such as the Western Green Energy Hub in Western Australia, described above, and the massive Sun Cable solar and battery (and maybe wind) project in the Northern Territory are looking at exports in the form of electricity and ammonia, and are outside of the country’s main grid. But they are not the only project thinking big.

A whole host of new planning proposals released and flagged over the last few months reveal a significant jump in scale, not just in wind and solar projects, but also in some of the big battery proposals that are designed to be built on the same piece of land.

Andrew Forrest, the iron ore billionaire and green energy champion, is leading that charge, quite literally with two projects in the south west of NSW that have battery components sized at more than 12 gigawatt hours, or 12,000 megawatt hours – at Gol Gol and Koorakee.

To put that in context, it is only seven years since the first big battery on the grid was installed – a 129 MWh facility at Hornsdale, the original Tesla big battery. That came less than a year after a report from the grid operator found it unlikely that any batteries bigger than a megawatt would be built any time soon.

Australia now has more than 20 big batteries in operation across the country, and another 40 under construction, including what will take the mantle as the biggest in the country when complete – the 560 MW, 2240 MWh Collie battery in Western Australia.

The Collie battery is being built by Neoen, and is 20 times bigger – in storage terms – than the original Hornsdale battery that Neoen built in 2017, and more than five times bigger than another Neoen battery that – until recently – inherited the title as the biggest in the country, the 300 MW, 450 MWh Victoria Big Battery.

But the scale of the batteries being proposed by Forrest’s Squadron Energy dwarfs them all, and points to the growing demand and need for battery storage as the country races towards its 82 per cent renewable energy target for 2030, and the plunging cost of battery cells that is also working its way through global supply chains.

The Gol Gol battery – proposed for around 10 kms north of Mildura in the south-west renewable energy zone in NSW, and near the new interconnector with South Australia – is interesting because it will accompany a major wind and solar project, and be pitched at eight hours of storage – 1,500 MW and 12,000 MWh.

That highlights how big batteries are now targeting the mid-duration storage market and are squeezing out pumped hydro projects for what was once considered a sweet spot for that technology. Pumped hydro may still be needed for longer duration storage, but without that other key market may find it all the more difficult to make an economic case.

Not far away, and still within the South West REZ, Squadron’s Koorakee Energy Park envisages even longer duration storage with a proposed battery sized at 1 GW and 12 GWh, or 12 hours of storage. That would be part of a park also including 1 GW of wind and 1 GW of solar capacity.

That is at a level of storage not envisaged just a few years ago, and – if delivered at that scale and if it is cost competitive – would basically take over the medium-storage market needed for overnight storage and flattening solar ducks.

They are not the only battery projects proposed which are far bigger than what is being built now, as this table above from Renew Map illustrates. (You can find out more of Renew Map offerings here).

The problem for many of these projects is that they are competing with a number of other gigawatt scale projects – in wind, solar, battery storage and a combination of two or all three – in a zone with a nominal capacity of just 4 GW.

The new transmission line that will run through the region – Project Energy Connect – will only be rated at 330kV, and many people now think that 500kV might have been a better idea.

Building some big batteries at either end, could, however, increase the capacity rating, as the so-called Waratah Super Battery will do on the Central Coast with the transmission lines serving the state’s major load centres.

Other projects of considerable scale also proposed for the region include the 2.5 GW Abercrombie wind project west of Hay that is proposed by Danish wind turbine manufacturer and developer Vestas and will include two different battery installations totalling 1 GW and 4 GWh.

Outside of the South West REZ, Metlen, formerly known as Mytilineos, wants to build a 2.4 GW / 4.8 GWh battery energy storage system (BESS) near the town of Denman, in the heart of coal country near Bayswater in the Hunter-Central Coast REZ. 

Another Australian energy storage developer Enervest, has proposed the 1 GW / 4 GWh minimum Stoney Creek BESS in Narrabri which announced a supplier on Tuesday. 

Note: See also Renew Economy’s Big Battery Storage Map of Australia. And to find out more about Renew Map’s resources and offerings, please click here.