Monday 20 December 2021

Climate Action on Our Doorstep

Just 14 km away is Eraring Power Station (EPS), owned and operated by Origin Energy. EPS has four 720 megawatt (MW) coal fired units, and one 42MW diesel fuelled gas turbine.

Eraring is Australia’s largest power station with a generating capacity of 2922MW, and accounts for approximately 25 percent of New South Wales’ power requirements.

In January 2021, Origin announced plans to progress the development of a major grid scale battery at Eraring.

This battery has a potential peak generation output of 700 MW. If it goes ahead it will be one of the largest battery projects (in terms of both peak power output and energy duration) in NSW and Australia.

Large-scale batteries can in theory be placed anywhere along the electricity grid. However, to take advantage of the infrastructure already in place and reduce the cost of the energy produced, Origin is looking at installing large-scale battery technology at many of their existing power stations, including the a 700MW battery project at the Eraring Power station.

Interestingly, a large-scale battery located next to a power station is not powered by the power station. Large-scale batteries operate independently, are connected to the grid and can continue to operate when the power station is not running or even after it may have been retired from service. Origin has committed to exiting coal-fired generation by 2032 and we anticipate that the capacity at Eraring will be replaced by a combination of renewables, battery storage and gas peaking power stations.


This was an excerpt from https://www.originenergy.com.au/blog/how-large-scale-batteries-support-renewables/

No comments:

Post a Comment