A massive 1.2-gigawatt (GW), four-hour (4.8 gigawatt hours) battery project, potentially the biggest in the country’s main grid, has entered the federal government’s environmental assessment queue and has also launched its bid for state planning approvals.
The Hanworth battery is proposed by Octopus Australia, an offshoot of British clean energy investment giant Octopus Group, which wants to build the system along one of the state’s main transmission lines, and near the major Bannaby substations, west of Bowral in the southern Highlands.
The battery will utilise lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) batteries housed in 708 battery containers, each of which houses around 56 battery modules, and will also comprise a 33 kV / 500 kV substation and associated switchyard infrastructure, including an underground line to the Bannaby Substation.
The Hanworth project’s submission to the federal government’s EPBC queue comes seven months after Octopus Australia acquired the project from development company Enervest, which is still working on planning approvals.
It was one of two projects Octopus Australia snagged, along with the smaller Dunmore hybrid project in Queensland from Korean giant Samsung, which will combine a 300 MW solar farm with a 150 MW/300 MWh battery.
