Energy Vault Holdings and ACEN Australia have reached contractual agreements for two battery energy storage system (BESS) deployments totalling 200MW in Australia.
Construction on both deployments is expected to begin in the second half of 2024, with commercial operations expected in 2025 and 2026.
The agreements are under final contract procedural preparation and are expected to be executed and closed formally within the first half of May 2024.
Under the agreement, Energy Vault will deploy both a 50MW/100MWh BESS and a 150MW/300MWh BESS at ACEN Australia’s 720MW New England Solar, one of the largest solar projects to participate in Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM).
The BESS will be charged and discharged on a daily basis and designed to dispatch stored renewable energy at peak consumption hours to help meet the high demand during New South Wales’ peak load hours while reducing the region’s reliance on coal-fired power generation.
Supported by the NSW Government’s Emerging Energy Program, the New England BESS project is part of ACEN’s broader strategy in Australia, where they are actively developing over 1GW of projects.
ACEN Australia’s New England Solar, located near Uralla, completed Stage 1 of construction in 2023, when 400MW of solar generation was officially brought online.
Upon completion of Stage 2, the site will generate a total of 1800GWh of renewable electricity annually.
In 2023, ACEN Australia secured a 20 year Long Term Energy Service Agreement (LTESA) for New England Solar in the NSW Government’s first renewable energy and storage auction.
The LTESA is a risk management mechanism that will support the project in the future if the National Electricity Market moves into a sustained period of low prices.
“ACEN Australia’s New England Solar is a critical source of renewable energy for the NSW region, and we are proud to play a role in ensuring its ability to reliably provide the region with clean power in the most efficient and cost-effective manner possible,” said Robert Piconi, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Energy Vault.
ACEN Australia Managing Director David Pollington said: “Energy Vault’s ability to work with our Siemens S120 converters will be particularly valuable as we optimise our battery storage systems for maximum efficiency and impact.”
The BESS deployments, developed under Energy Vault’s B-VAULT integrated battery energy storage solutions, will be coupled with a Siemens S120 inverter, which enables grid support functionalities such as voltage and frequency ride-through, grid support during disturbances and reactive power control.