<
https://reneweconomy.com.au/you-have-to-be-creative-why-australias-most-successful-grid-scale-battery-developer-reinvents-itself/>
"One of the most fascinating parts of the green energy transition – and in
recent years the most uplifting – has been the rapid growth in the battery
storage sector, and how bit by bit the best developers have slowly unfurled the
multiple uses that can be applied in the grid.
Battery storage is sometimes referred to as the Swiss Army Knife of the grid
because, unlike virtually any other grid asset, is has the speed and
flexibility to perform multiple tasks, from storage and time shifting solar, to
act as a peaking plant, address frequency control and other grid services such
as inertia and system strength, and network support.
The main problem is that few people predicted this, least of all the market
regulators and rule makers, so there has not been a ready-made market for these
services. That has required a certain amount of creativity and trust as
developers took new ideas to the network, government or market operators, and
landed a contract to deliver them.
The most successful of these developers has undoubtedly been Neoen Australia.
In 2017 it landed a contract with South Australia to help build the very first
Tesla Big Battery, formally known as the Hornsdale Power Reserve, and has
expanded that and built other big battery projects with often “first of the
kind” contracts with governments and/or grid operators.
Hornsdale, for instance, has been expanded to deliver the first services of a
battery with “grid forming inverter” technology, now seen as a key in the shift
away from fossil fuelled spinning machines.
It landed the first grid services contract – acting as a kind of virtual
transmission – with the Victoria Big Battery, a contract now replicated by the
NSW government with the giant Waratah Super battery which will act as a giant
“shock absorber.”
Neoen also landed the first “baseload renewables” contract with the Blyth
battery in South Australia, where it is combining with the new Goyder South
wind farm to deliver firm green power to BHP’s giant Olympic Dam mine.
Neoen is now building the country’s biggest battery at Collie in Western
Australia – 560 MW and 2240 MWh – after winning key contracts to help soak up
excess solar in the middle of the day to put them back into the grid in the
evening peak.
It is also building one of the world’s biggest batteries in Ontario, Canada,
where it will be tasked, as will other batteries of a similar size, to soak up
excess nuclear in the middle of the day and return that to the grid in the
evening peak – just as it is doing with rooftop solar in W.A.
The transition in services has seen the duration of the batteries also increase
significantly, from less than 1.5 hours in the Hornsdale battery to four hours
of storage in some its new projects. Some other batteries are being attracted
to deliver eight hours of storage as the opportunities for arbitrage grow in
the grid."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
