A wind farm set for construction in the New South Wales Southern Tablelands is seeking to plug co-located battery systems into three-quarters of the project’s turbines, using a “DC-coupled” hybrid approach that has been piloted at an operational wind farm in Victoria.
Goldwind Australia late last year applied to the NSW department of planning to include co-located battery energy storage systems (BESS) at 53 turbine locations at its 75-turbine, 298 megawatt (MW) Coppabella wind farm, formerly known as the Yass Valley wind farm.
It is a significant development in the roll out of renewables in Australia. Nearly all new solar farm developments are now combining battery storage to create solar-battery hybrids, but the Coppabella project could be the first wind project to do this at scale.
And Goldwind plans to make these hybrid systems standard offering for the industry.
“We’re now including this in all of our development projects, and we’re providing the details on the solution to customers, so that they can plan that into their projects,” Goldwind Australia director John Titchen told the Tasmania Energy Development Conference last week.
