A four-hour big battery being built in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley to help replace EnergyAustralia’s Yallourn coal power plant, which closes in 2028, has hit a major milestone, with all of its more than 1,000 Wärtsilä battery units now in place.
The 350 megawatt (MW, 1,400 megawatt-hour (MWh) Wooreen Energy Storage System (WESS) is being developed next door to EnergyAustralia’s Jeeralang gas power plant in the heart of Victorian coal country.
EnergyAustralia , one of Australia’s three biggest privately owned utilities, broke ground on the $700,000 million project in February of 2025, hailing it as “the biggest single investment” the company has ever made.
In July, it sold a 50 per cent share in the WESS project to Banpu Energy Australia, the local subsidiary of the Thai energy giant, for about $110 million. EnergyAustralia is still building and operating the project, as well as leading community engagement.
Wooreen is using Wärtsila batteries and smarts, with the balance of plant for project being delivered by Zenviron, which announced the project’s latest milestone on Tuesday.
