The federal Australian Liberal government are clearly being paid by and beholden to the coal and oil industries one time literally bringing in a lump of coal into the parliament for a pre-school like show and tell session:
Despite the federal government clearly working against the Australian people it seems the states have decided to do good thing for us. First the South Australian state built and installed the now famous Hornsdale Power Reserve in partnership with Tesla and Neoen which is currently the largest battery plant in the world. South Australia have now changed governments and so their future plans to install 50,000 Tesla Powerwalls on to primarily low cost housing is now under threat. Only time will tell if people-power can keep that project on track, thankfully the previous government signed contracts for stage one to be completed so at least 1,110 homes will be installed but fingers crossed that the project goes to completion, it'll be a real win for the residents of South Australia.
Hot on the heels of the South Australian news the Victorian government has just signed off two large scale battery installs of their own. One is in partnership with Tesla, the Gannawarra Energy Storage System (GESS) in Kerang. The second (and way more exciting for me because it's in my own town!) in partnership with Fluenece is the Ballarat Energy Storage System (BESS). The GESS is a 25MW/50MWh system and the BESS is a 30MW/30MWh system. Both projects are expected to be complete within 6 months.
As someone who lives with a 14KWh battery on my home I am super excited to see these grid scale batteries being deployed. I have been arguing that Ballarat needed to capture the excess energy coming from the many wind farms we have in the area and so I'm super excited to see exactly that now happening. I'll definitely being taking a drive to the BESS location to see if it's possible to capture its progress and I look forward to seeing it turned on. I'll have to see if I can swing an invite to the ribbon cutting!