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One of the most powerful batteries built anywhere in the world has started operating at the site of an old coal-fired power station in New South Wales, delivering a critical boost to the eastern seaboard’s electricity grid as it transitions to cleaner energy sources.
United States-based asset giant BlackRock’s Akaysha Energy on Tuesday said it had activated the first batch of capacity from its $1 billion Waratah Super Battery, a project spanning the size of eight Australian rules football fields at the shuttered Munmorah Power Station site on the NSW Central Coast.
BlackRock is involved with the Waratah Super Battery in NSW, which will rank among the biggest grid-scale batteries anywhere in the world.
The huge storage system would initially work like a “shock absorber” to buffer the network from disruptions caused by events such as lightning strikes or bushfires, the company said.
Grid-scale batteries, with response times measured in split seconds, are seen as essential to Australia’s green energy shift because of their ability to soak up surplus renewable output in daylight hours and use it to plug gaps in supply and stabilise the system at times of low wind and sunlight, or during unexpected outages.
While the Waratah Super Battery would initially be limited to 350 megawatts, it would reach 850 megawatts with 1680 megawatt hours of storage once it ramped to full capacity, which may be as early as the end of the year, Akaysha said on Tuesday.
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This would make it the most powerful utility-scale battery in the world, although other larger projects are under construction elsewhere in Australia and the world.
Australia is experiencing one of the world’s fastest energy transitions as polluting coal-fired generators, which still supply most of the grid’s electricity, reach the end of their lives, while wind and solar farms are expanding their role in the grid every year. Australians are also world leaders in per-person solar uptake, with more than 4 million homes – or one in three – now fitted with rooftop solar panels.
However, all those solar panels are making far too much electricity in the middle of the day when the sun is brightest, and hardly any when the grid needs it most – in the evenings when the sun sets and demand spikes as people arrive home and turn on lights and appliances.
To help balance wild swings in supply and demand before the next wave of coal plant closures, Australian governments, utilities and investors are pouring billions of dollars into developing large, flexible battery storage systems across the grid.
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The Australian Energy Market Operator has been calling for greater investment in “firming” assets, including batteries and hydroelectric dams, alongside a new fleet of fast-ramping, gas-fired power stations to prepare the grid for a rapidly approaching future without coal.
Switching on the Waratah Super Battery was a “win for our grid, and a win for households and businesses”, said Hannah McCaughey, chief executive of NSW government-owned EnergyCo, which is overseeing the project’s delivery.
“It will help provide clean, reliable and affordable energy to the people of our state and the national electricity market,” she said.
Akaysha Energy chief executive Nick Carter described the start-up of the first 350 megawatts of the Waratah Super Battery as a “major milestone, and a moment of real pride” for the Melbourne-based company, which was bought by BlackRock in 2023.
Transgrid, which owns and operates the high-voltage transmission network in NSW, said the Waratah Super Battery had been contracted to provide automated real-time system monitoring services for 36 transmission lines to detect overloading and respond within seconds.
“In network contingency events such as lightning strikes, the System Integrity Protection Scheme acts as a shock absorber to return the network to a stable condition and maintain continuity of supply for consumers,” Transgrid general manager Jennifer Hughes said.
“It’s like an insurance policy for NSW, and the whole system is triggered automatically, making it fast and reliable in responding to a system event or fault.”
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