The width of each rectangle is scaled to the battery’s power capacity in MW and the height is scaled to the battery’s energy storage capacity in MWh. So a battery with 1h duration would be a square.
What’s really clear is how tiny the existing batteries (green) look compared to what’s coming. The Victorian Big Battery is the largest in Australia and at 300 MW / 450 MWh was the largest in the southern hemisphere and one of the largest in the world when it was built 3 years ago.
But this is dwarfed by the batteries under construction (yellow), such as:
➡️ The Waratah Super Battery (850 MW / 1,680 MWh)
➡️ The Melbourne Renewable Energy Hub (600 MW / 1,600 MWh)
➡️ Collie in WA (500 MW / 2,000 MWh).
Australia’s battery capacity is going to treble over the next 18 months as some of these start to come online.
And some of the recent announcements are real multi GWh whoppers, which I’ve highlighted in red on the map, such as:
➡️ Kemerton in WA (660 MW / 2640 MWh)
➡️ Portland (1000 MW / 2500 MWh)
➡️ Goyder North (900 MW / 3600 MWh)
It’s also clear that battery durations have transitioned from 1h being the norm to 4h or even 8h being standard now.
Battery storage is a key ingredient in the transition to renewable energy and we are going to need a lot of it!
