Fifteen big battery projects, almost all of them with four hours of storage and nearly half of them destined for Queensland, have been named as the winners of the federal government’s latest auction – a storage-only affair – under its Capacity Investment Scheme.
The results CIS Tender 8 were announced on Wednesday by the federal Labor government, having more or less met its target of 4 GW of four-hour equivalent clean dispatchable capacity across the National Electricity Market (NEM).
The result of the latest storage auction comes as batteries, both big and small, are being hailed by the market operator and by pricing regulators as playing a major role in pushing down electricity prices, flattening the solar duck curve, and generally stabilising the market.
Australian Energy Market Operator chief Daniel Westerman told Australian Energy Week earlier this month that there is currently around 7 gigawatts of grid-scale battery capacity installed on the National Electricity Market (NEM) – enough capacity to meet roughly 20 per cent of peak demand.
On average, Westerman says large-scale batteries have been delivering more than 1,000 MW – or 1 gigawatt (GW) – into the evening peak over the first quarter of the year, “reducing the need for more expensive peaking gas generation.”
