Giant batteries may be used as lower cost way to boost capacity in stranded renewable zones
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Giles Parkinson
Aug 26, 2025
Battery, Storage
EnergyCo, the government owned body responsible for delivering the transition from coal to renewables in New South Wales, has confirmed that more giant batteries are being considered as a lower cost option to boost capacity in the state’s renewable energy zones.
The use of batteries in this way, also referred to as “virtual transmission” or giant “shock absorbers”, allows transmission lines to be operated at greater capacity, in turn allowing for more wind and solar to be built within a certain area.
The best known of these giant shock absorbers is the Waratah Super Battery, which is now working through the final stages of its commissioning process, injecting and absorbing record amounts of power at its location at a shuttered coal fired generator on the Central Coast.
At 850 MW and 1680 MWh, Waratah is the most powerful battery to be built in Australia, and quite possibly the world, and will also be the most powerful machine of any type to be connected to any of Australia’s main grids.
See: Super “shock absorber” battery smashes records again as it charges and discharges at unseen levels
In the south-west renewable energy zone, only four out of several dozen competing projects won access to the grid in a recent auction of “access rights”, and three of these had to accept a major hair cut on the scale of their projects.
In total, just 3.5 GW of capacity has been allocated out of 15-20 GW that applied, and another 20 GW or so that didn’t bother applying because of the chronic undersizing of the landmark project.
Some blame a major mistake in calculating the wind and solar resource for the lack of capacity. See: Major blooper on wind output has stranded some of Australia’s best projects with no grid access
Some of those thwarted developers, including French giant Engie, and Australian companies Squadron Energy and Windlab, have been pushing for giant batteries to be contracted to allow more capacity to be exported from the South West REZ into the main load centres.
They have also been looking at creating local load options, such as data centres, which would remove the need to transport the wind and solar power.
At a Battery Asset Management Summit in Sydney on Tuesday, EnergyCo executive project director Phil Bratby confirmed the organisation is discussing the rollout of more System Integrity Protection Schemes (SIPS) – as the shock absorber contracts are officially known – with the state transmission operator Transgrid.
“We are exploring more SIPS schemes,” Bratby said, in reference to the SW REZ.
“We’re looking at a bunch of options to see what we could we do to get more capacity out of that renewable energy zone, because we only awarded 3.5 gigawatts of generation … (and) I think it was 15 or 16 gigawatts actually appeared as part of that process.
“There are a whole lot of renewable developers that want to connect to the network and are unable to, so we are looking more broadly at a range of options to increase that transfer capacity.
“And I think SIPS schemes have to form part of those solutions, or at least those options we look at because they are cheaper than building new transmission. We’ve all seen the news that is being reported about transmission costs.
“If we can run the existing transmission harder through SIPS schemes, then I guess that is a great outcome for consumers.”
The Australian Energy Market Operator has said that transmission costs have surged by at least 50 per cent, leading it to flag a rethink of future options as it updates its multi-decade planning blueprint known as the Integrated System Plan.
See: AEMO flags rethink of transmission plan as costs soar and social licence bites
In résponse to AEMO’s Draft Electricity Network Options Report, Squadron – which has more than 4.5 gigawatts of wind and solar capacity, plus storage, stranded at three different projects within the SW REZ – said non-network options such as giant batteries were an obvious option.
It said its proposed Gol Gol battery, possibly sized at 1,500 MW with 12 hours of storage, could effectively double the carrying capacity of the main transmission line through the REZ, the Project EnergyConnect link from South Australia to NSW.
It included a table in its submission suggesting that making 800 MW and two hours of storage from a battery at the Buronga substation – similar to the maximum to be deployed under the Waratah SIPS – could cost between $200 million and $500 million.
“Non-network solutions mean the avoidance of transmission development challenges including those related to land acquisitions, and development approvals,” Squadron wrote.
“This provides a much faster and timely solution to unlock additional capacity in the network. Squadron will continue to engage with EnergyCo, AEMO and Transgrid on the market-led augmentation and this non-network solution to realise the full potential of the SW REZ and wider network.”
reneweconomy.com.au |
