Cairns A Queensland Battery Blitz Beneficiary

Cairns has been announced as one of the locations that will benefit from the Queensland Government’s recently announced battery blitz.

Last week the Palaszczuk Government said it would be rolling out another 13 large-scale batteries across the state as part of progress towards achieving its 50 per cent renewable energy target by 2030, which is becoming a bigger challenge as time goes by.

One of the new storage systems will be a monster – a 400MWh battery at Greenbank, south of Brisbane. There are a bunch of details yet to be finalised, but it’s expected construction of that facility will begin next year. At this point, the preferred location for the 200MW / 400MWh battery is Powerlink’s Greenbank substation. CS Energy will install, own and operate the battery on Powerlink owned land.

As for the other batteries such as the one announced for Cairns, they’ll be significantly smaller in capacity – up to 8MWh.

“By basing the batteries at a substation in the community, it means renewable energy will be generated locally, stored locally, and then used locally, reducing the pressure on the upstream transmission network,” said Queensland Energy Minister Mick de Brenni yesterday. “We’re adding more local renewable energy storage to the mix in Cairns that means locals can keep installing solar and saving money, by creating more capacity on the network.”

Cairns A Solar Power Hotspot

The popularity of PV keeps solar installers in Cairns pretty busy. Just in the 4870 postcode, which includes Cairns and Cairns North, more than 9,420 small-scale solar power systems with a collective capacity of 63,851 kW had been installed as at the end of May this year.  With a population of 73,803 (2021 Census), that works out to around 865 watts of solar capacity installed per person against an Australia-wide average of 678 watts per capita – so Cairns is punching well above its weight.

One of the challenges of having a lot of rooftop solar within a given area is it can create some local network management challenges, which can be alleviated through various strategies including the use of home batteries and community- and large-scale energy storage systems.

Member for Barron River Craig Crawford said there will be other positives from the Cairns battery.

“This new battery system will deliver efficiencies for the network and also provide price benefits to residents and businesses across Cairns.”

.. and that would certainly be welcome, but perhaps he was referring to a wider effect right across regional Queensland as more batteries (and renewables) pop up.

On a related note, the Queensland Competition Authority was the bearer of bad news late last month. From July 1, regional Queensland power prices will be going up – a 9.2 per cent increase in the annual bill for a typical customer on the main residential tariff (tariff 11).

The QCA said the culprits behind the price rise were high demand, reduced generation availability from coal and gas plants, and higher coal and gas prices – but also a slowdown of renewables coming online. However, there was some good news for solar owners, with regional Queensland’s feed in tariff to jump by a whopping 41% to 9.3 c/kWh.

Related: Solar ‘101’ – Regional Queensland Edition

Original Source: https://www.solarquotes.com.au/blog/cairns-network-battery-mb2535/