Modo Energy forecasts big future for Australian big batteries

The nation’s grid-scale battery fleet is forecast to grow rapidly through 2027 with market analytics platform Modo Energy revealing 16.8 GW/42.8 GWh of battery energy storage system (BESS) projects are in the national grid’s three-year pipeline.
Image: ZEN Energy

New data from Modo Energy shows 16.8 GW of new-build BESS projects are being developed in Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM), with Modo projecting 12.5 GW of the pipeline will begin commercial operation before 2028.

Modo Market Analyst Hatta Misra said grid-scale battery capacity in the NEM national grid is expected to reach 14.5 GW through 2027, a more than sevenfold increase on the 2 GW currently available.

Misra said the projections, detailed in Modo’s latest “NEM Battery Energy Storage Pipeline Report,” are based on the development status of individual projects.

“More than 6.2 GW of batteries are currently under construction or in commissioning, triple the power of the current operating fleet,” said Misra. “A further 4.6 GW of batteries in the pipeline have also reached financial closure or are in advanced planning stages. This means that 10.9 GW of batteries are in advanced stages of development. We believe that these batteries will almost certainly be constructed and will likely be completed on schedule.”

Misra said another 5.6 GW of projects in the pipeline are in earlier planning stages or still classed as tentative.

“These projects face a greater risk of delay, downsizing, or cancellation, and our projections of buildout reflect this risk,” said the Modo analyst.

UK-headquartered Modo, which entered the Australian market last year, said the shift to bigger batteries in the NEM is a key driver of the expected capacity growth with 19 of the projects forecast to come online in the next three years being 300 MW in scale or larger.

Construction of some of those longer-duration batteries – including Origin Energy’s 700 MW/2.8 GWh Eraring battery project being built on the New South Wales (NSW) Central Coast, and the 50 MW/400 MWh Limondale battery being built by German energy utility RWE in the same state’s Riverina district – has already commenced.

The shift to longer-duration batteries is also expected to have a major bearing on total energy storage capacity with Misra confirming that most projects in the pipeline have at least two-hour durations.

“Currently, batteries with durations of two hours or less dominate the 3 GWh of battery energy capacity in the NEM, with the average duration of the fleet being 1.5 hours,” he said. “However, based on the pipeline, the NEM will have over 40 GWh of energy capacity by the end of 2027, due to 95% of pipeline projects having durations of two hours or greater.”

Modo said the pipeline of battery projects is concentrated in the states of NSW, Queensland, and Victoria. Of the 16.8 GW of projects in the three-year pipeline, 6 GW are located in NSW, 4.8 GW in Queensland, and 3.9 GW in Victoria.

From pv magazine Australia.

Written by

  • David is a senior journalist with more than 25 years' experience in the Australian media industry as a writer, designer and editor for print and online publications. Based in Queensland – Australia’s Sunshine State – he joined pv magazine Australia in 2020 to help document the nation’s ongoing shift to solar.

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