- The government of New South Wales has approved plans to increase the maximum sizing of a battery storage system at what could be Australia’s largest project of its type.
- The entire BESS will still fit within the approved boundaries of the project site, in an area close to substation which serves as the site’s connection point to the transmission grid.
The government of New South Wales has approved plans to increase the maximum sizing of a battery storage system at what could be Australia’s largest project of its type. New England Solar is a large-scale solar PV power plant project in the southeastern Australian state, on which construction began in early 2021 across land near the town of Uralla in the New England Tableland plateau. Total generation capacity is planned to reach 720MWac (936MWdc), with the project being built in two phases – the first 400MWac (521MWdc) phase came online in March this year, with the rest to follow.
It is being developed by ACEN Australia, a subsidiary of Philippines conglomerate Ayala Group and the regional division of Ayala’s listed energy development platform ACEN, in a joint venture (JV) with India-headquartered developer UPC Renewables. At the time installation of battery storage equipment began in March, as reported by Energy-Storage.news, the PV power plant was to be paired with a 50MW/50MWh battery energy storage system (BESS). However, an ACEN executive said the BESS could be expanded to 200MW/400MWh if market conditions made that economically feasible, and this larger output and capacity for the site was approved by the New South Wales Independent Planning Commission as the entire project was given the green light in 2020.
Primary among those modifications is that the BESS portion of the solar-plus-storage plant can be up to 2,800MWh, at 1,400MW output (2-hour duration). The entire BESS will still fit within the approved boundaries of the project site, in an area close to substation which serves as the site’s connection point to the transmission grid.
That would make it larger potentially than the Waratah Super Battery, also in New South Wales and currently under construction as an asset with at least 850MW output and 1,680MWh energy capacity. What is currently set to be Australia’s biggest BESS project is designed to serve as a “giant shock absorber” for the grid, helping to maintain continuity of electricity supply in outages and other disruptions, as well as helping the state to integrate higher shares of renewable energy.
ACEN Australia CEO Anton Rohner noted last week that the state’s coal-fired power stations are due for closing within the next two decades, “The New England Solar battery storage can charge using excess power generated from solar and wind, and discharge that energy when required. It will be a reliable, cheaper, and greener form of energy generation for NSW.”