Zen Energy breaks ground on its first big battery project

Zen Energy has officially broken ground on its first big battery project, the 138MW/330MWh Templers BESS being developed near Gawler in South Australia.

The groundbreaking ceremony was attended by key project stakeholders, including inverter and battery giant Sungrow, whose PowerTitan technology is being used for the Templers project.

Sungrow, with consortium partner Shanxi Electric Power Construction, says its “state-of-the-art liquid cooling battery technology” will play a role in grid reliability, mitigating intermittency issues and stabilising power supply in the region.

“This collaboration marks a significant step towards a sustainable future. We are committed to advancing renewable energy initiatives and look forward to the successful completion of this project,” Sungrow said on LinkedIn on Monday.

The Ross Garnaut-led retailer Zen announced its plans to build a grid-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) after buying the more than $200 million Templers project from RES Australia in March of 2023.

“We are building our first utility-scale battery in South Australia, the state where it all began for Zen,” said Zen CEO Anthony Garnaut, at the time.

The big battery, located around 60km north of Adelaide, had already locked in approval to connect to the grid and Zen had hoped to kick off construction in 2023 and have the project fully energised by the end of this year.

The company plans to use the Templers battery to support the delivery of energy to its existing South Australia-based customers, as well as for grid-stability services for the wider National Electricity Market.

Zen started its journey to supply cheap “basload renewables” to Australian businesses back in late 2017, when it obtained a licence to retail electricity, with a focus on users with demand of more than 160MWh per annum.

Since then, the company has mostly achieved this through power purchase agreements, but branched into renewables development with the Templers BESS and, more recently, with ambitious plans to develop a 1GW pumped hydro project on New South Wales coal territory that will supply up to eight hours of “firmed” renewable energy.

Origin Energy is also considering its own battery project near the same site – next to the local sub-station – with a 200 MW, 400 MWh project called Templers Creek.

See also Renew Economy’s Big Battery Map of Australia.