Australian state to award battery tender in Aug to shore up power grid

[MELBOURNE] Australia's Victoria state will announce the winners of a tender for 100 megawatt hours of battery power in late August, with the energy storage to be installed by January 2018 to shore up a shaky grid, a state government spokesman said on Thursday.

Victoria and the wind- and solar-dependent state of South Australia are both running tenders to build energy storage to avert the kinds of outages and power price spikes that have plagued eastern Australia over the past year.

"The Department received a strong response to the battery storage request for proposals, which closed on 13 June," a spokesman for Victoria's energy minister, Lily D'Ambrosio, said in an emailed statement.

The state expects to seal contracts by late August, with projects expected to be completed in January 2018, as it looks to provide back-up at times of high power demand, which tend to hit when the wind isn't blowing and the sun isn't shining.

Victoria is providing A$25 million (S$26.3 million) to help fund two batteries with a mininum capacity of 20 megawatts which could supply 100 megawatt hours of power in total.

South Australia, which is reviewing a shortlist of bids after having received 90 expressions of interest for its A$150 million battery tender, wants 100 MWh of storage in place by December.

REUTERS