Victorian Big Battery
| Victorian Big Battery | |
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| Coordinates | 38°02′S 144°17′E / 38.04°S 144.29°E |
| Status | Operational |
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| External links | |
| Website | victorianbigbattery |
The Victorian Big Battery is a grid-connected battery energy storage system (BESS) facility adjacent to the Moorabool Terminal Station (substation) near Geelong in Victoria, Australia and is owned by HMC Capital. The battery provides 450 MWh of storage and can discharge at 300 MW. It surpasses the 250 MWh Gateway Energy Storage in California, United States. When it was commissioned in December 2021, the project was the largest lithium-ion battery in the Southern Hemisphere.
The Victorian Big Battery was built by French renewable energy producer Neoen. Funding of $160 million was provided by the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Australian government's green bank.
Construction started at the beginning of 2021. It commenced operations on 8 December 2021. It uses Tesla Megapack storage units, an electric accumulator designed specifically for large-scale projects.
The battery aims to prevent blackouts during periods of network instability by providing grid support services, capturing and storing excess energy from sources such as wind farms, and feeding it into the grid during peak periods or outages to support Victoria's electricity supply. The battery will store enough energy to power more than half a million Victorian homes for an hour, or the homes of a population equivalent of Geelong (the city where it is situated) for two hours.