The development application has been approved for a key component to Canberra's so-called $400 million "Big Battery" project, with the grid-scale Williamsdale installation to begin construction later this year.
At 250 megawatts of storage, it will be second only in size to the 300MW Territory Battery, planned to be built by French multinational Neoen, directly south of the Stockdill substation south of Holt.
Neoen built the first of the Stream 1 projects, the 100MW Capital Battery, next to Transgrid's Queanbeyan substation, using Chinese-made CATL batteries and installed by energy storage company Doosan.
The Capital Battery started out as a 50MW battery won from ACT government's 2020 renewable energy auction and has since increased to 100MW.
The Williamsdale project will be built by Eku Energy, a fast-growing company established less than two years ago by Macquarie Asset Management's Green Investment Group. It will store enough energy to power one-third of Canberra for two hours during peak demand periods.
To date, much of the Macquarie group's investment has been focused overseas with its most recent Australian large-scale project being a joint project with Shell Energy for the 200MW Rangebank Battery Energy Storage Storage (BESS) to be built on two hectares of land within the Rangebank Business Park in Melbourne's south-east, due for completion late this year.
The ACT has agreed to pay Eku Energy fixed quarterly payments over a period of 15 years in exchange for a "consequential share" of the revenue the battery generates in the national electricity market.
Eku Energy chief executive Dan Burrows described the Williamsdale project as "our first GWh of projects in delivery in Australia".
"We are proud to be working in partnership with the ACT government to deliver the development of the first stream of the Big Canberra Battery," he said.
The Williamsdale and Territory batteries will be part of the ACT's Stream 1 projects.
The ACT government has also finalised the installation of batteries at nine government sites across the city as part of its work on Stream 2 of the project. The Stream 2 sites include batteries capturing rooftop solar from nine government sites, including:
- Belconnen Parks Depot;
- Gungahlin Family and Child Centre;
- Allara Depot;
- Kambah Depot;
- Ron Reynolds Centre;
- Chifley Community Hub;
- Ngunnawal Bush Healing Farm;
- Cotter Depot; and
- Greenway Ambulance Station.
Two further batteries will be installed at Mt Stromlo High School and 255 Canberra Avenue, Fyshwick in early 2025.
