'Great Western Battery' 1,000 MWh project suggested to aid reliability in Australia's post-coal age

• Renewable resource developer Neoen last month released its prepare for a brand-new project in New South Wales, Australia, called the 'Great Western Battery' which will certainly be amongst the nation's largest battery power storage system centers to date.

Neoen worked with infrastructure solutions firm AECOM to write a Scoping Report which details what the project would do and also why it could be a crucial property for the area's power network. The system would have a "generation capability of about 500MW" (ranked result) as well as up to 1,000 MWh capability, capable of supporting stability of the neighborhood electrical power network as New South Wales continues its change to a higher dependence on renewable resource sources like wind and solar.

The France-headquartered company lagged the largest such system integrated in Australia to day, the Hornsdale Power Reserve (150MW/ 194MWh) project in South Australia which was famously provided in just 100 days complying with a pledge by equipment supplier Tesla's CEO Elon Musk.

The system has given that been outshined for dimension by a number of more recent lithium-ion battery projects including the Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility finished by Vistra Energy in California that, at 300MW/ 1,400 MWh, is now the world's biggest. Various other really large projects have actually been advanced by numerous entities in Australia also in the past couple of months, consisting of a 700MW battery system at a coal plant run by electricity generator and also store Origin Energy which could have up to 2,800 MWh capacity and also several projects in the pipeline totalling 850MW by the 2024 financial year from AGL, an additional significant utility in the nation. Current studies into the initial years of operation of 2 large energy storage space facilities revealed that they had actually measured up to their billing as well as provided both financial and ecological advantages, along with surpassing first expectations.

The Great Western Battery, recommended to be constructed in Wallerawang, NSW, qualifies as a State Significant Development due to its dimension, financial worth and/or potential favorable impacts, which indicates it can bypass specific neighborhood preparation barriers. The project will certainly include the structure of a brand-new transmission line to attach the system to the existing neighborhood 330kV substation run by transmission network driver TransGrid.

According to the designer's report, the battery system will certainly sustain the combination of new energy sources in one of the major multi-gigawatt Renewable Energy Zones (REZ) that NSW is supporting. The system will certainly likewise aid stop load dropping as well as possible power outages - something which Neoen claimed there is a strong worth connected with energy storage space for finishing with the region seeking to eliminate the use of coal generation in the coming years.

Neoen said it wants to get to roughly AU$ 6 billion (US$ 4.6 billion) in financial investment worth of its projects in Australia by 2022 and also set up around 6GW of renewable energy and storage space in the country by that time. The scoping report claimed that the Great Western Battery will certainly have an approximated capital investment (CAPEX) price of in between AU$ 300 million and also AU$ 400 million based on current plans, with construction approximated to start in 2022 for the system to go into operation the following year.