Already a subscriber?The Miles government will sink $25 million into Queensland’s first plant to build large-scale batteries for the power grid, shrugging off a series of financial failures of battery-related companies in the state.
An unidentified London-based private equity firm is investing $40 million of equity in the plant, which will make batteries that can store surplus solar and wind power and provide it later over periods of up to 14 hours to power stations, electricity retailers and industrial customers.The project is being led by Energy Storage Industries, which holds the rights in the Asia-Pacific region to technology developed by Oregon-based ESS Tech.
“Crisafulli’s energy policy is to scrap Pioneer Burdekin Pumped Hydro and replace it with small pumped hydro plants,” Mr Dick told“Queensland Hydro’s study on pumped hydro storage makes it clear that 60 small pumped hydro plants would be needed to replace Pioneer-Burdekin Pumped Hydro, and to date, David Crisafulli has not revealed where one of those plants would be constructed.
But Mr Dick said he was confident the new venture would not suffer a similar fate, insisting his department had rigorously assessed ESI’s performance capabilities.“In undertaking the due diligence, Treasury had the benefit of being able to review existing projects that ESI has with Stanwell and Energy Queensland,” he said.