Work is underway on a $65 million rollout of eight community-scale batteries across the Western Sydney grid, where they will soak up plentiful household solar and help some of the hottest suburbs in Australia – and in the world – to power through future summer heatwaves.
The first sod was turned on Thursday in Penrith at the site of the first of the series of battery energy storage systems (BESS) that are being privately funded by Auconnex, a subsidiary of New South Wales network company Endeavour Energy.
The Penrith medium-voltage BESS will provide just under 5 megawatts (MW) of power and 17 megawatt-hours (MWh of storage. All up, the eight BESS projects will provide about 40 MW of power and 136 MWh of storage, enough to power 40,000 homes for up to three hours.
Endeavour Energy says Penrith and the surrounding suburbs have been recorded as the hottest place on Earth, hitting 48.9 degrees Celcius in January 2020, hotter that day than anywhere else on the planet.
“It’s the geography, the concrete, the way hot air gets trapped against the mountains, and it means the suburb copes with heat extremes most of the country never sees,” a media briefing note explained.
