<
https://reneweconomy.com.au/why-australias-biggest-coal-state-is-so-excited-about-having-the-worlds-most-powerful-battery/>
"The state of NSW, at least those parts thinking about the transition from coal
to renewables, is in a state of excitement. It now plays host to the world’s
most powerful battery, which has been partially commissioned, and is rolling
out a new solution – a giant battery shock absorber – that has never been seen
at such scale.
And the rest of the industry is excited too. Many, particularly the big wind,
solar and battery players like Andrew Forrest’s Squadron and Windlab, France’s
Engie and Germany’s RWE, want to see such batteries replicated across the grid.
They see it as the only way, and a much more economic way, to get over the cost
and social licence hurdles and poor decisions that have limited grid capacity
in some of the country’s most attractive wind and solar resources.
Big batteries have been changing the way people think about the grid since the
first large scale one was built in 2017, the Tesla big battery at Hornsdale. It
is now a solution for frequency control, synthetic inertia, system strength,
soaking up solar, energy arbitrage, and a lot more.
Nearly everything about the Waratah Super Battery speaks to the pace and scale
of the transition from coal to renewables in Australia, and in NSW in
particular, which still retains more coal capacity than any other state, but at
least has been realistic about putting in a plan to transition from fossil
fuels to renewables in little more than a decade.
The Waratah battery is being built – like many big batteries – at the site of a
former coal-fired power station, in this case Munmorah. Most others are being
located at such facilities to take advantage of the grid infrastructure left
behind.
At 850 megawatts (MW) and 1690 megawatt-hours (MWh), Waratah will not be the
biggest battery every built in terms of storage, but it is for now the most
powerful battery (the 850 MW power part) to be built in Australia, and anywhere
in the world according to the NSW government owned EnergyCo.
And it will have a unique role in the market, acting as a giant shock absorber
to allow more capacity to be transported across the main transmission lines
feeding the major load centres."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
