Neoen acknowledges the Wiradjuri people, Traditional Owners of the land on which Great Western Battery will store energy. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present.

FAQs

ABOUT THE BATTERY

Construction of the Great Western Battery will take around 30 months.

The Great Western Battery will have a capacity of up to 500 MW with a storage duration of up to 8 hours. It is likely to be built in two stages. Once completed, the battery will take approximately 10 hectares of land. The battery cabinets are normally around 2.5 metres tall.

The Great Western Battery will be located near the existing Wallerawang substation, on a freehold rural property approximately 2km north of the town of Wallerawang.

The land was selected because it is relatively flat, close to the electricity network, and in a rather isolated area.

The Great Western Battery will utilise Lithium-Ion batteries and associated equipment from leading manufacturers. These manufacturers are selected through a competitive tender process.

The facility will be an orderly arrangement of battery cabinets, inverters and control systems including electrical and data cabling. The battery packs are enclosed in custom designed, dust and waterproof ‘cabinets’ made of steel. The cabinet colour will be white, or light coloured to assist with heat management, and each cabinet has its own internal thermal management system.

The Great Western Battery will store energy in times of high production and release energy in times of high demand, similar to how a battery on a home solar system works. It will also help to stabilise the grid in a few different ways – it has an emergency response mode to prevent blackouts and it can maintain voltage and frequency levels.

Current battery technology comes with a 20-25 years warranty. The batteries will still retain the majority of their capacity during this period and will be capable of operating beyond it depending on market conditions and other factors.

In making the transition from fossil fuels to ‘baseload’ renewables, the ability to store and dispatch energy will play a key role. Pumped hydro is an example of longer-term storage that is suitable for storing energy and releasing it over days or weeks. However, pumped hydro has a relatively slow ‘ramping’ time and is less suitable for providing rapid-response services to grid contingency events such as outages or heat waves (with high demand created by air-conditioning). Battery storage fills this key short-term role.

These are some of the functions a grid-scale lithium-ion battery may be expected to perform:

  • Frequency support: To maintain the stability of the system, the grid has frequency control. The battery discharges electricity in response to frequency changes. The battery will also add competition to the market, reducing electricity costs.
  • Virtual inertia: Like a cruise control button in your car, inertia services are a way of maintaining stability of the grid. A big battery can enable the advanced power inverters to emulate the existing inertia services being supplied by an ageing fleet of fossil fuel power plants.
  • Network support: Grid-scale batteries can provide dynamic warp-speed responses so existing transmission lines can operate at full capacity. Like adding another lane to a freeway, the battery can unlock additional capacity on existing transmission networks, saving customers millions of dollars in expensive transmission line upgrades.
  • Firming renewables: Along with wind and solar technologies, large-scale batteries help firm variable renewable energy. Batteries are an essential component in the stable transition to clean electricity and achieving emissions reduction targets.

Many of these services have been provided by coal and gas generators in the past. But as they close down, battery energy storage can, and is, being used to deliver these critical services.

ECONOMIC

The project will be privately financed by Neoen.

The Great Western Battery can reduce costs for consumers in three ways:

  • supporting more wind and solar, which are now the cheapest forms of power
  • allowing more power to flow into the state, increasing competition and pushing electricity prices down
  • helping to avoid blackouts and the associated costs

It is expected that Great Western Battery will create a significant volume of construction jobs and a number of full-time ongoing positions during operations. One of our key areas of focus for the broader local community is facilitating the involvement of local jobseekers and businesses to ensure a strong regional economic benefit.

Expressions of interest for work can be registered on the project website. When the project gets closer to construction, we will develop a Local Participation Plan which will go into greater detail to identify and map the following:

  • Employment opportunities for local jobseekers
  • Supply chain opportunities for local contractors
  • Training and apprenticeship opportunities

LOCAL

During construction, we expect some localised traffic, noise and dust impacts. However, we will be managing these to minimise them as much as possible. Following installation, the battery will be visible at the site and will look like an enclosure of white containers.

As with most projects of this size, there will be some impacts. In this case they will be mostly during construction. We will work with the community, neighbours and NSW Department of Planning to minimise these impacts. As part of the planning process we are required to submit a Traffic Management Plan along with noise and dust impact studies.

We will be working with the community throughout the project to understand local concerns and aspirations, and ensure we minimise any impacts. We encourage the community to provide feedback through completing the survey.

A Community Benefit-Sharing Scheme will be established for the life of the project. We’re keen to hear from the community about what form this would take.

SAFETY & ENVIRONMENT

The Great Western Battery obtained development approval from the NSW Department of Planning in November 2023.

Big batteries play a critical role in Australia’s energy transition by offering services that provide stability, strength and reliability to our electricity grid. However, like all electrical infrastructure, they come with a level of fire risk.

In Australia, there have been two fire incidents at large-scale battery storage sites – one at the Victorian Big Battery in 2021 and another at the Bouldercombe Battery in September 2023. Both fires were contained within the site with help from local fire authorities and did not spread to the surrounding areas.

Australia has strict safety requirements for companies like Neoen looking to develop and operate big batteries. These include ensuring vegetation control around electrical infrastructure and on site, provision of adequate water reserves and more. Neoen ensures that its projects including a big battery site meets all safety requirements from the local and state government fire authorities.

The battery will use similar technology to the batteries that are being increasingly installed in homes, just on a larger scale. There are no known health risks associated with properly maintained large-scale battery installations.

We commit to removing all above-ground infrastructure and the site will be rehabilitated when the project ceases to operate. This is a condition of the Development Approval.

After removal, a large percentage of the material in the batteries will be reclaimed or recycled; more than 60% of materials, especially critical minerals, will be recovered for re-use.

Batteries do not produce any gas or smoke under normal operations.

Before installation, the battery will also be evaluated for the potential release of toxic and flammable gases under abnormal and fault conditions including thermal runaway or mechanical damage. The testing will provide measured data on gas type, quantity, and propagation to ensure that air quality standards are maintained.