The NSW Coalition government has announced final approvals for the Waratah Super Battery – which at 850MW and 1680MWh is the biggest committed battery project in the southern hemisphere – with construction to begin almost immediately.
The Waratah Battery will be the biggest in Australia’s grid when complete – although likely to be quickly overtaken by a range of other ambitious battery projects – and will play a similar “shock absorber” role to the current holder of the biggest battery title, the 300MW/450MWh Victoria Big Battery near Geelong.
The instant response and flexibility of the batteries mean they can act as shock absorbers or cushions for the grid, allowing the market operator to run transmission lines at their full capacity, allowing more power to be delivered to major demand centres such as Sydney, Newcastle and Geelong.
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NSW Treasurer and energy minister Matt Kean said construction Waratah Super Battery will be completed by 2025, in advance of the earliest possible closure date of the Eraring coal-fired power station.
“The NSW Liberal and Nationals Government has the most ambitious renewable energy and storage plan in the country and the Waratah Super Battery is the first of many big energy projects to get underway,” Kean said in a statement, before entering into campaign mode with the election just a month away, and Labor leading the polls.
“While Chris Minns and NSW Labor run around creating fear about ‘the sun not shining and the wind not blowing’, we are focused on getting on with the job of building major renewable energy storage projects that we need to lower power prices and keep the grid reliable,” he said.
“The Liberal and Nationals Government’s pipeline of projects to ensure reliability and affordability is clear, however the Labor Party’s true plans for the State’s electricity system remain murky.
The NSW government says the Waratah Super Battery will drive up to $1 billion of private investment into NSW, and will be built by newly emerging Akaysha Energy, in partnership with transmission company Transgrid.
It will be built on the site of the demolished Munmorah coal-fired power station, about 50kms south of Newcastle.
Marie Jordan, Transgrid’s head of network, said the company is connecting the battery to the grid via its existing Munmorah substation and will carry out major upgrades to existing transmission lines and substations to enable additional energy to be delivered to consumers.
“We will also develop and operate a $30 million System Integrity Protection Scheme (SIPS) to control the standby network battery’s activation when additional energy is required, ensuring it can respond almost instantly to any disruptions in the power system,” she said.
The construction of the Waratah battery has been cited by the Australian Energy Market Operator as one of the principal reasons why fears of short term breaches of the reliability standard have been removed, particularly in the still coal dependent states of NSW and Queensland.
See also: Big Battery Storage Map of Australia
