West News Wire: One of Australia’s top LNG suppliers, the British energy behemoth Shell, has signed a contract to manufacture a massive battery system there.
According to a joint press statement released on Friday, Macquarie Asset Management and Green Investment Group collaborated with Shell to construct two enormous batteries at the Rangebank business park in Cranbourne, southeast Melbourne.
Greg Joiner, CEO of Shell Energy Australia, said, “The Rangebank project is our first grid-scale battery investment in Victoria and represents Shell’s first direct equity investment in a utility-scale BESS globally.
This demonstrates Shell Energy’s dedication to quickening the energy transition and fostering the expansion of firming capability.
The 200-megawatt, 400-megawatt-hour battery system will have the storage capacity to power 80,000 homes across Victoria for an hour during peak demand when it is finished in 2024.
The $300-$400 million project will increase Victoria’s “firming capacity” and provide essential services to ensure the stability of the system, enhancing Victoria’s potential to host more renewable energy.
This is Shell’s first grid-scale battery investment in Victoria and its first direct equity investment in a utility-scale battery energy storage system internationally.
Joiner stated that as the clean energy transition accelerated, the business anticipated constructing a huge battery of a comparable scale per year in Australia.
Big batteries will become more crucial as Australia moves away from coal-fired energy because of their capacity to store renewable energy when it is most plentiful and to release it when it is not sunny or windy.
The initiative, created by GIG and Shell Energy, aims to promote the safe, secure, and dependable functioning of Australia’s power grid while increasing Victoria’s capacity to host renewable energy.
Shell Energy will have access to 100% of the battery’s offtake over a 20-year period, according to an offtake arrangement.
Other BESS projects for Shell Energy in Australia include two 500MW/1,000MWh facilities in development in New South Wales, one of which is being co-developed with AMPYR Energy in Wellington, Central West NSW.
And the other of which is being built at a different site of a decommissioned coal power plant close to the town of Lithgow, with Shell holding full development rights.
The company also has a cooperation and 100MW/200MWh offtake agreement with utility Edify Energy inked in 2021 from a 300MWh portfolio of projects, which is also in New South Wales.
