A $42.5 million project in far north Queensland is set to combine big battery storage and solar to supply power after sundown and during peak usage times.
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) is providing $17.4 million funding support for Conergy Group subsidiary Lakeland Solar & Storage Pty Limited to build and operate a 10.8 MW (AC) solar photovoltaic (PV) plant with 1.4 MW / 5.3 MWh of lithium-ion battery storage near the town of Lakeland.
ARENA CEO Ivor Frischknecht said the landmark project was well placed to work alongside ARENA’s major push to deploy more large-scale solar PV plants across Australia.
“Figuring out how solar PV and battery storage technologies best work together at a large scale will be crucial for helping more renewables enter our grids,” Frischknecht said.
“We know that battery storage will play a critical role in our future energy systems. The benefit of adding batteries to solar farms is simple; they store energy from the sun for use at peak times and overnight. They can also smooth solar energy output on cloudy days.
“This plant will generate and store enough renewable energy to power more than 3000 homes and create up to 60 jobs in the Lakeland region during construction."
Frischknecht said the global energy transition is happening faster than many anticipated and Australia is well placed to be a key player.
"Our growing expertise in integrating renewables and batteries could readily translate into economic opportunities including export dollars in world markets," he said.
“Solar farms with storage can be especially useful at the edges of our electricity grids. This project adds to ARENA’s portfolio of fringe-of-grid projects, which prove how renewables can enhance the reliability of energy supply in regional Australia and benefit local networks.
“Fringe-of-grid locations face a number of challenges with reliability and outages caused by network constraints, a lack of infrastructure and long distance power lines."
This project is aiming to be the first in the world to test a concept known as ‘islanding’ from the main electricity grid. The local town of Lakeland will be powered solely by solar and batteries for several hours during these tests.
The project will be connected to the Ergon Energy network while a detailed battery testing plan will be implemented over the first two years of operations, culminating in testing ‘island mode’ during the evening peak.
Frischknecht said ARENA had worked with Conergy to form a knowledge sharing steering committee, joined by BHP Billiton, Ergon Energy and Origin Energy.
BHP Billiton said it expects to gain valuable insights into the potential for solar and storage to assist its remote operations, while Ergon is considering if it could help avoid network upgrade costs in other regional Queensland communities.
More broadly, the project will develop an improved connection process for solar PV plus battery plants and share information with relevant regulatory bodies.
BHP Billiton senior environment manager, Dr Graham Winkelman said beyond contributing to global greenhouse gas emissions reductions, solar and storage projects may also assist BHP Billiton in the future to reduce its own operating emissions while helping to support energy reliability at some of our more remote operations.
“BHP Billiton has a commitment to accelerating the development and deployment of low emissions technologies and we believe that to do this we must facilitate the sharing of knowledge and lessons from projects such as the Lakeland Solar and Storage Project,” Dr Winkelman said.
The $42.5 million project is scheduled for completion in April 2017.