Neoen’s Hornsdale Power Reserve big battery upgrade done and ready to keep system fired up
Making the world’s biggest battery even bigger strengthened the power grid but also poured millions into the economy and kept hundreds of people working.
SA News
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Upgrading the big battery at Jamestown supported 158 jobs during construction and gave a $300m boost to the South Australian economy, engineering firm Aurecon estimates.
A project to expand the battery by 50 per cent has been completed, renewable energy company Neoen announced on Wednesday.
“The fact that it’s bigger is good,” Neoen Australia managing director Louis de Sambucy said.
“But for us, what’s even more important is the innovation this provides.”
The first stage of building the world’s biggest battery and attracting global attention through Tesla boss Elon Musk proved it could save consumers many millions of dollars and strengthen the power grid.
“Now we are adding layers of services,” Mr de Sambucy said.
“The battery can react faster than you can imagine.
“This is the grid of the future but it’s happening now and it’s happening here in SA.”
Called the Hornsdale Power Reserve, the expanded battery will provide inertia – an essential component of grid stability – as well as extra capacity.
Aurecon estimated half of the increased economic benefit went to Mid North and Yorke Peninsula region.
As well as 158 on-site jobs, it estimated another 898 indirect jobs were supported during the project, which began in November last year.
Neoen will create six permanent jobs to run the site, which is attached to the Horsdale wind farm. A further 59 ongoing indirect jobs will be supported.
Neoen spent about $70m on expanding the Hornsdale Power Reserve to 150MW, taking its investment in Australia over the past eight years to some $2.5bn.
It now has 1.5 gigawatts of power in wind, solar and storage in operation or under construction – and aims to double that in the next two years.
Mr de Sambucy said the scale of capital investment was big, but all energy systems were expensive.
Batteries have an expected life of 15 to 20 years but were increasing continuously.
Neoen is building a $500m wind, solar and storage project at Crystal Brook and has released plans for a $3bn project at Burra called Goyder South.
Energy and Mining Minister Dan van Holst Pellekaan said the Government had backed the project.
“This is a cutting edge service which will help address our historic system security challenges and allow us to adopt more renewable energy,” he said.
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency said it was exciting to see the Hornsdale Power Reserve provide large-scale energy storage “for the vast amounts of renewable energy produced in SA.
“Of critical importance to ARENA is the valuable information we will gain in showing that batteries are capable of providing inertia services and fast frequency responses to the grid, paving the way for potential regulatory changes and revenue streams to incentivise further grid scale batteries to be built across Australia,” chief executive Darren Miller said.