Victoria’s coal centre is about to get its second big battery

The second big battery to be built in the Latrobe Valley – the heart of Victoria’s declining brown coal generation industry – is about to go through the commissioning process after entering the grid management system.

The 100 MW, 200 MWh Latrobe Valley battery is being built by Tilt Renewables next to the Morwell terminal station, and will follow the 150 MW, 250 MWh Hazelwood battery, built at the site of the former brown coal generator, as the second in the region.

The move into the Australian Energy Market Operator’s grid management system was noted by GPE NEMLog’s Goeff Eldridge. It means that the battery has met its Generator Performance Standards (GPS) and market requirements, and can now work its way through the commissioning process.

The battery system is being supplied and maintained by US-based Fluence, which also built the Hazelwood battery, and is being connected to the grid by AusNet. A second stage could lift its total capacity to 200 MW, and 800 MWh, depending on market conditions.

A number of new big battery projects are being built in the Latrobe Valley, with the biggest at this stage being the 350 MW, 1400 MWH Wooreen battery by EnergyAustralia, which is committed to shutting down the Yallourn brown coal generator in 2028.

That Wooreen battery is already under construction, with others to be built including AGL’s Loy Yang battery, Eku Energy’s Tramway Roads battery, and Flow Power’s Bennett Creek battery.

The Loy Yang A and the Loy Yang B brown coal generators are both expected to close by 2035, in line with the state government’s legislated target of 95 per cent renewables by that date. That target will require 6.3 GW and around 25 GWh of storage.

It is the first big battery to be built by Tilt Renewables, which is also proposing to build a 100 MW, 400 MWh battery next to the Snowtown wind complex in South Australia. Tilt operates a number of wind farms around the country, and two solar farms in NSW – Broken Hill and Nyngan.

Update: In a later post on LinkedIn, Tilt confirmed that hold point testing is now underway at the Latrobe Valley battery.

See Renew Economy’s Big Battery Map of Australia for more information on battery projects already operating, under construction, planned and proposed.