ENGIE, Macquarie’s Green Investment Group (GIG), and Fluence have partnered to deliver Australia’s largest privately-funded and owned utility-scale battery at Hazelwood Power Station.
The project is fully committed and will connect to existing network infrastructure to support the transition to renewable energy at the site of the former Hazelwood Power Station in the Latrobe Valley.
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The Hazelwood Battery Energy Storage System (HBESS) is a 150MW/150MWh utility-scale battery that will deliver further electricity grid stability for Victoria. It has the capacity to store the energy equivalent of an hour of energy generation from the rooftop solar systems of 30,000 Victorian homes, playing a critical role in increasing the state’s energy capacity and delivering further grid stability.
As an established power generation site with access to 1,600MW of dormant transmission capacity, Hazelwood is uniquely placed to accommodate battery infrastructure. Situated at the former Hazelwood Power Station in the Latrobe Valley, the Hazelwood Battery forms part of ENGIE’s commitment to repurposing the site, which ENGIE has been rehabilitating since 2017.
The battery’s innovative design and the site’s unique location provides the flexibility to scale up storage capacity quickly and cost-effectively in order to respond to network and market demand.
Battery storage serves a key role in accelerating the build-out of solar and wind resources, capturing excess power during periods of high renewable generation while discharging to meet peak demand and reduce reliance on high-carbon energy.
The Hazelwood Battery will also participate in frequency control ancillary service markets, delivering critical stability to a grid increasingly comprised of intermittent renewable sources.
The battery will be built using Fluence’s latest-generation Gridstack technology platform—made of 342 modular, standardised factory-built Fluence Cubes—providing industry-leading reliability and safety at all levels of the system.
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It will take about a year to build and should be operational by November 2022, ahead of increased electricity demand over the summer months.
The battery has an expected lifespan of 20 years, but key components of the battery can be augmented over time, or can potentially change storage technologies at the same point of grid connection further in the future to extend the life of the asset.
