Tasmania's huge potential to provide extra renewable power, storage and critical grid services to the struggling mainland market will be needed sooner than most expect given the speed of the transition to clean energy, says the man in charge of delivering the Battery of the Nation project.

The likely earlier closure of baseload coal plants, which are struggling in the market as the solar power boom hollows out daytime prices, points to the need for the multibillion-dollar project on top of what is set to be provided by the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro storage scheme, Evangelista Albertini, the new chief executive of Hydro Tasmania, said.