The first sod has been turned at a the site of a big battery being developed in Newcastle, New South Wales, marking the beginning of construction for the project and a new milestone for distribution network company Ausgrid’s first foray into utility-scale energy storage.
Ausgrid’s 200 megawatt (MW), 400 megawatt-hour (MWh) Steel River battery energy storage system (BESS) is being built next to an existing substation in the Steel River Industrial Estate in Mayfield West, in northern Newcastle.
The project was approved for construction in late March by the NSW Independent Planning Commission (IPC), having been sent there after attracting 61 public objections to its development, mostly from people living hundreds of kilometres away from the project.
A report on the submissions notes that “no submissions were received from the suburb of Mayfield (where the project is located),” while “all three submissions within 50 km of the project location were in support.”
“The remaining 61 submissions were received from outside of a 50 km radius of the project and were in objection. In total, 24 of the 64 submissions were received from outside of NSW, including six submissions from Queensland, one from Tasmania and 17 from Victoria.
