Batteries – big, small and in-between – are “fundamentally changing” the electricity system, the head of the Australian Energy Market Operator says, while also changing the outlook for AEMO’s grid blueprint, the Integrated System Plan.
In a speech to Australian Energy Week in Melbourne on Wednesday, AEMO chief Daniel Westerman took stock of the nation’s booming battery storage markets, and the impact they are having on electricity supply, demand, pricing and planning.
Westerman says there are now around 7 gigawatts of grid-scale battery capacity installed on the National Electricity Market (NEM), which – with peak demand of about 33 GW – is enough capacity to meet roughly 20 per cent of peak demand.
At the small end of the scale, the more than 420,000 batteries installed through the federal rebate scheme over the past year means there are now around 600,000 Australian homes with storage – nearly three times the number in California.
“And these batteries, large and small, are fundamentally changing the way electricity is produced, consumed and priced across the day,” he told the conference.
