A New South Wales big battery project that last year survived a challenge from long-distance objectors to win state development approval has now reached financial close, after being bought up by a global energy storage owner-operator.
Australian renewables outfit Acenergy said on Thursday that its 250 megawatt (MW), 1,000 megawatt-hour (MWh) Yanco battery energy storage system (BESS) had been acquired by UK-based outfit BW ESS, which will take the project through construction and into long-term operations.
The Yanco BESS is slated for construction near the town of the same name in south-western NSW, where it will sit next to an existing large electricity substation, alongside a rail line, surrounded by numerous existing transmission lines, and just 200 metres from a local sewerage treatment plant.
The project was sent the state’s Independent Planning Commission in September last year after receiving 63 public submissions objecting to its development, more than 90 per cent of which came from people and “special interest groups” located more than 100 km away.
As Renew Economy reported at the time, nearly one third (17) of the objectors came from interstate and there were no objections from anyone living within five kilometres of the project site.
