The Neighbourhood Battery Feasibility Study is due to conclude in just over a month's time at the end of June 2022.
While we don't know visually what the battery will look like, the study has already given us some idea of its size and capability.
The early findings of the Neighbourhood Battery Feasibility Study indicate a 5MW / 10MWh Grid Scale Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) connected to the high voltage network is part of the key infrastructure needed to address the objectives identified by the community in the Good Power People report.
When coupled with islanding equipment, the battery would have the potential to support the town for two hours in peak load and longer in lower demand periods.
The battery could run the town in an "island" when the incoming Powercor feed goes down.
The battery would be one of the first steps towards an advanced microgrid solution and would allow more solar exports.
It is a similar proposal to projects already implemented or being implemented in Kalbarri (WA), Phillip Island (VIC), Mallacoota (VIC), Yackandandah (VIC) and Kurri Kurri (NSW).
The battery would also help with community resilience in the event of a major disaster and support the expansion of renewable energy in the community by enabling the grid to support a much higher penetration of rooftop solar and further reducing CO2 emissions by around 2400 tonnes a year.
In February 2022 the community was asked to complete a survey to prioritise the four key objectives it had identified for the battery.
In order of priority the community said the battery should:
assist the region on its path to 100% renewables by 2030;
provide power reliability in the event of a short term outage (less than 2 hours);
provide power resilience in the event of a bushfire or other natural disaster;
allow for greater amounts of solar power to be exported to the grid.
