Transmission company Transgrid is to build the first big battery in Australia using Tesla’s recently introduced Megapack battery technology, and what is likely to the first of more than 10 big batteries to be built across NSW as it prepares for the retirement of its ageing coal fleet.
The Wallgrove Grid Battery will be located at the Wallgrove substation in western Sydney and will provide fast frequency response and inertia services to the NSW transmission network as well as a synthetic inertia product known as “Virtual Machine Mode”.
At 50MW/75MWh, the Wallgrove battery will be the second biggest in the country – after the highly successful first Tesla big battery at Hornsdale in South Australia that delivered 100MW/129MWh, and was recently expanded to 150MW/194MWh.
The $61.9 million battery will receive up to $11.5 million in funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, and another $10 million from the NSW government as part of its $75 million Emerging Energy Program.
It will the first of at least a dozen big batteries to be built across NSW, with the state government previously announcing backing for four other big batteries to be built, including at the Sapphire wind farm and proposed New England solar farm, and AGL has already agreed to build four separate big batteries in a deal with Maoneng, and also a big battery of up to 500MW at the site of Liddell coal generator that will close in 2023.
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