The stability of the national grid hinges on a massive rollout of battery storage. With facilities such as Kwinana and Hornsdale leading the way, create looks at the challenges and opportunities presented by the battery storage bottleneck.
What demands are being made of Australia’s energy grid right now?
The picture is a complex one, with the exact proportion of different energy sources varying from state to state at any given moment.
States such as Victoria, NSW and QLD are heavily reliant on black and brown coal. At the same time, a sizeable solar proportion indicates the substantial role played by renewables particularly in the eastern states.
Flexible resources such as gas, hydro and batteries are required to smooth over short-term fluctuations.
With demand sometimes outstripping supply, battery storage emerges as a key player in the arithmetic of energy.
Batteries installed at large, grid-connected facilities play a critical role in capturing excess renewable energy, releasing it during periods of higher demand to smooth the flow of electricity and reduce stress on traditional generators.
“Grid-connected, megawatt-scale batteries provide frequency control, load shifting and contingency reserves – operating under market dispatch or grid operator control,” said Grant Watt, Senior Policy Advisor at Engineers Australia.
“Batteries provide millisecond response for grid stability and frequency control, voltage support and peak shaving.”
He pointed to AEMO’s Quarterly Energy Dynamics report, which shows that batteries are often the dominant source of frequency control ancillary services.
To help address demand and shore up future supply, Australian companies and governments are building out the country’s vital network of battery energy storage systems (BESS).
Use the interactive map below to browse a selection of Australia’s BESS sites, including those:
Currently operating – marked with a green battery icon
Under construction – marked with an orange spanner icon
Being planned – marked with an exclamation mark
There are hundreds across the country, so we’ve chosen a selection across every state and territory, with major installations including Hornsdale in South Australia – termed the world’s first big battery – and Kwinana in Western Australia.
Click on the arrows on the right margin to pull up a full list of sites.
Commissioned in September 2023, the Kwinana Battery Energy Storage System Stage 1 – more commonly known as KBESS1 – represents an important step for the WA Government’s decarbonisation efforts as the electricity system moves from fossil fuels to renewable sources.
The 100-200 MWh facility can power up to 160,000 average homes in WA for approximately two hours.
One of the most innovative aspects of KBESS1 lies not in the size but in how it has led to the repurposing of the outmoded Kwinana Power Station, a facility that was commissioned in 1970 as a traditional steam turbine site fuelled by coal, gas and oil.
Read the full story of how Kwinana is driving large-scale battery adoption in WA.
Battling the bottleneck
Despite installations such as Hornsdale and Kwinana pushing Australia’s energy storage ability to new levels, challenges remain for truly making ground in the energy transition.
A new report on storage integration in the National Electricity Market, from Monash Energy Institute’s Grid Innovation Hub in collaboration with PSC Consulting, outlines the scope of this challenge.
The report’s author Professor Guillaume Roger, also the hub’s Co-Director, said that storage is the bottleneck of any meaningful energy transition.
“In Australia, the transition of the electricity industry is outpacing the speed at which the institutions governing the market have been adjusting,” he said.
“There are significant challenges ahead around the concept of reliability based on energy rather than power, what it means for market operations, and for the procurement of sufficient storage capacity to address most, if not all, contingencies.
“The economics of storage are challenging. It is difficult to operate and it has implications for the manner in which we conceive of an efficient market. However, some reforms are well within reach to better take advantage of storage.”
In the report, Roger suggests one mechanism to procure storage capacity and reach the target level of renewable penetration – a “tax and subsidise” scheme designed to foster procurement, in response to what he describes as the “social value” of storage capacity exceeding the (private) value to investors.
This mechanism represents an opportunity for engineers to improve not only the technical viability of battery storage in Australia, but also the social and financial feasability.
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