Neoen SA yesterday said that it is to partner with Tesla Inc to install one of the world’s biggest lithium-ion batteries in Australia after reaching a grid connection deal with the power market operator.
The 300 megawatt Victorian Big Battery is planned for Geelong in Victoria state and use Tesla’s Megapack technology.
It would be double the size of Neoen’s Hornsdale site in South Australia state, which was the largest facility when it began operations in 2017.
Photo: Reuters
Installing the new system in Australia’s second-most populous state would help to modernize and stabilize the local grid, which is targeting 50 percent of its power to come from renewable sources by 2030, Neoen said in a media release.
The Paris-based company is targeting the battery to be operational by the end of next year.
Battery storage technology is being deployed on an ever-growing scale to meet demand to back-up the surge in wind and solar power generation.
About US$951 billion would be invested in the technology through 2050, with two-thirds deployed on utility-scale systems, BloombergNEF forecasts showed.
Tesla is seeing rising demand for grid-scale batteries and the new Australian project would offer further evidence that the systems are suitable to back up intermittent wind and solar power, Tesla chairwoman Robyn Denholm told a webinar.
“What we’re seeing is many energy operators around the world don’t want to renew their fossil fuel-type turbines, they want to put storage in, they want to harness renewable energy,” Denholm said.
Tesla founder Elon Musk has previously said that the firm’s energy business could one day rival its electric vehicle division in size.
Neoen’s Hornsdale lost its status as the world’s biggest storage battery to a facility near San Diego, California, which began operations this year. Several other larger battery projects are planned, including in the US and China, BloombergNEF data show.
“The big battery will help protect our network in summer, create jobs and drive down energy prices, as well as supporting our recovery from the coronavirus pandemic,” Victoria Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change Lily D’Ambrosio said in a separate statement.
The new project in Victoria would be supported by a 250 megawatt grid services contract with the Australian Energy Market Operator and would also partner with network provider AusNet Services, Neoen said.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in server chips, expects revenue to decline this year due to sagging demand for 5-nanometer artificial intelligence (AI) chips from a North America-based major customer, a company executive said yesterday. That would be the first contraction in revenue for Alchip as it has been enjoying strong revenue growth over the past few years, benefiting from cloud-service providers’ moves to reduce dependence on Nvidia Corp’s expensive AI chips by building their own AI accelerator by outsourcing chip design. The 5-nanometer chip was supposed to be a new growth engine as the lifecycle
RSS