AGL turns sod on 50-MW/50-MWh battery in New South Wales

• Aussie utility AGL Energy Ltd (ASX: AGL) on Thursday formally launched the building and construction of its 50-MW/50-MWh Broken Hill battery energy storage system (BESS) project in New South Wales.

The project is expected to require a financial investment of AUD 41 million (USD 26.3 m/EUR 26.2 m).

Planned to come to be functional in 2023, the battery system will release lithium-ion modern technology by Fluence Energy Inc (NASDAQ: FLNC). The energy storage joint venture people power generation team AES Corp and Germany's Siemens AG will certainly give its GridstackTM product under a contract signed in March.

The BESS will be developed by Fluence and its regional partner Valmec and also results from come to be functional in the middle of 2023. It will give storage and firming capacity to the National Electricity Market as well as may assist in the grid-connection of inverter-based renewables capacity in the region, AGL claimed.

Broken Hill belongs to an 850-MW bundle of projects that AGL plans to develop by the end of fiscal 2024, sustaining a plan to have 5 GW of renewables and firming possessions by 2030. The project will be know with funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).