Energy company AGL is responsible for close to 20% of the total generation capacity within Australia’s National Electricity Market, It looks likes the company is taking the transition to sustainable, renewable energy seriously with another announcement today, of a large-scale battery.
AGL has announced the development of a large grid-scale battery project in Victoria, while will be 200 MW in size and based at Loy Yang in the Latrobe Valley.
This follows the recent acceleration of plans for a 250 MW battery at the Torrens Island Power Station in South Australia and is part of wider plans to develop an 850 megawatts (MW) multi-site, integrated battery system.
AGL CEO and Managing Director, Brett Redman said AGL is leading the energy transition by developing a network of batteries, modernising Australia’s energy supply.
“We’re proud to bring this technology to the Latrobe Valley, a community that both play such a pivotal role in Australia’s energy generation.
The limiting factor for renewable technology has always been storage and we are taking control of these limitations by turning our attention to batteries.
We are investing in our people, our communities and the technology and in doing so driving Australia’s energy transition responsibly.
These battery projects are recharging our communities, as well as providing energy certainty for our customers.”
AGL CEO and Managing Director, Brett Redman
Mr Redman said these projects align with the commitments we made in our Climate Statement, which sets our target for net zero emissions by 2050.
“As Australia’s largest private investor in renewable energy, we know in order to deliver for our customers and communities we now need to lead the next phase of the energy transition by developing storage and firming technologies.
Doing so means we will continue to support the energy industry as it transitions from coal to renewables and helps ensure our customers continue to have reliable and affordable energy.”
In August this year, AGL announced plans for battery storage beside the Liddell Power Station but will review this in light of the recent NSW Government energy policy announcement.
AGL has also lodged a scoping report for the 50 MW battery in Broken Hill, NSW and is supporting grid-scale battery projects including Wandoan (100 MW), Maoneng (4 x 50 MW) and Dalrymple (30 MW).
Clearly, with this amount of investment in grid-scale battery storage, energy providers are repeatedly finding that the business case stacks up.
The energy captured by renewable technologies like wind and solar can be stored in batteries, for use when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, a concept that seems to escape many politicians.
In this instance, the big battery with be used to support a coal-fired power plant which is aging and is dramatically slower at responding to changing power needs than power supplied from the battery.
Time and time again we see the price of energy storage reduces and with large-scale battery projects occurring in most states of Australia, it seems the path to a cleaner energy future is clearer than ever.
For perspective, the scale of this AGL battery would be twice capacity of initial the big battery installed at the Hornsdale Power Reserve in SA. Originally that storage was 100MW in size, which was later expanded by 50% to 150MW.
It is currently not known who the supplier will be for the new battery, we’ll update you when we can confirm if it’s Tesla PowerPacks, yet again.
