Energy storage joint venture Fluence has contracted to deliver a 50-MW/50-MWh battery system for grid-forming support in Australia.
Energy utility AGL selected Fluence, formed by Siemens and AES, to provide advanced grid-forming capabilities for the Broken Hill Battery Energy Storage system project funded by ARENA. It will include Fluence’s Gridstack and be part of AGL’s planned 850-MW national battery storage rollout.
The goal is to demonstrate the capability of latest-generation inverter technology to support grid strength in areas of lower power capacity.
Unlike grid-following or other grid-forming energy storage systems in Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM), AGL’s Broken Hill energy storage system will start and remain in grid-forming mode, with all inverters operating as a voltage source.
The system will inherently resist changes in voltage and frequency on the grid and provide synthetic inertia, also known as Virtual Synchronous Machine (VSM) mode, and fault current contribution.
Related stories
Australian leaders approve Solar-storage-H2 Microgrid for Daintree Rainforest region
“As Australia moves forward with its energy transition, we know that firming technologies like energy storage will be the backbone of renew able energy supply,” AGL Chief Operating Officer Markus Brokhof said.
Fluence’s Aaron McCann, general manager for Australia, said the Broken Hill battery project will dispatch instantaneously to respond to variations in voltage and/or frequency.
Fluence and its partners, including Valmec, are expected to complete the project in 2023.
-- -- --
(Rod Walton, senior editor for EnergyTech, is a 14-year veteran of covering the energy industry both as a newspaper and trade journalist. He can be reached at [email protected]).