ARENA grants $14m funding for AGL’s Broken Hill battery project

This will help fund the 50MW/50MWh lithium-ion large scale battery storage.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) announced it will invest $14.84m to help AGL fund its 50-megawatt (MW)/50-megawatt-hour (MWh) lithium-ion large scale battery storage system project.

The project, located at Broken Hill in New South Wales, is worth a total of $41m. It is expected to improve system strength and facilitate higher penetrations of variable renewable energy generation at the lowest cost.

“Big batteries are already becoming critical to our electricity system, but we know with grid forming inverters they can provide system strength services traditionally provided by thermal generation,” ARENA CEO Darren Miller said.

“We are particularly interested in seeing how AGL’s Broken Hill battery will utilise and demonstrate advanced inverter technology in a weaker section of the electricity grid.” The Broken Hill project is expected to be completed in 2023.

According to ARENA, advanced inverters enable grid scale and grid connected batteries to provide system stability services traditionally provided by synchronous generation, such as coal or gas.

ARENA had also previously granted a $100m competitive funding round for grid scale batteries equipped with advanced inverters to support the grid, which is currently open for applications.

This is on top of three other projects that sought to demonstrate advanced inverter functionality, such as Electranet’s ESCRI battery, the Hornsdale Power Reserve expansion, and Transgrid’s Wallgrove Grid Battery.