Grid-scale energy storage solutions firm Energy Vault and ACEN Australia have inked contracts for the deployment of two battery energy storage systems totalling 400MWh in Australia.
Under the agreement, Energy Vault will deploy both a 50MW/100MWh BESS and a 150MW/300MWh BESS at ACEN Australia’s 720MW New England Solar—one of the largest solar projects to participate in the National Electricity Market (NEM).
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The BESS will be charged and discharged on a daily basis and designed to dispatch stored renewable energy at peak consumption hours to help meet the high demand during New South Wales’ peak load hours, while reducing the region’s reliance on coal-fired power generation.
Currently supported by the NSW Government’s Emerging Energy Program, the New England BESS project is a part of ACEN’s broader strategy in Australia, where they are actively developing over 1GW of projects.
ACEN Australia’s New England Solar, located near Uralla, completed Stage 1 of construction in 2023, when 400MW of solar generation was officially brought online. Upon completion of Stage 2, the site will generate a total of 1,800GWh of renewable electricity annually.
Construction on both deployments is expected to begin in the second half of 2024, with commercial operations expected in 2025 and 2026. The agreements are under final contract procedural preparation, and expected to be executed and closed formally within the first half of May 2024.
ACEN Australia managing director David Pollington said, “Energy Vault was selected for these projects due to their impressive track record and we are thrilled to leverage their depth of expertise in design, engineering, construction and procurement.
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“Energy Vault’s ability to work with our Siemens S120 converters will be particularly valuable as we optimise our battery storage systems for maximum efficiency and impact.”
The BESS deployments, developed under Energy Vault’s B-VAULT suite of fully integrated battery energy storage solutions, will be coupled with a Siemens S120 inverter, which enables advanced grid support functionalities such as voltage and frequency ride-through, grid support during disturbances, and reactive power control.
