Singapore renewable developer seeks partners for massive battery project
INFRASTRUCTURE developer Morrison has begun talks with possible strategic partners for a mega-sized battery project in Indonesia aimed at weaning Singapore off natural gas.
The New Zealand-based fund has hired advisers for discussions that it hopes to close in the next 12 months, for partners with experience in the region to take a stake in its multi-billion-dollar Vanda RE project, Vimal Vallabh, Morrison’s global head of energy, said in an interview in Sydney.
The venture between Morrison’s Gurin Energy and a unit of Malaysia’s Petronas Nasional is one of five developments that last month won approval to supply Singapore with 2 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy from Indonesia.
The city-state is seeking to import 4 GW of renewables by 2035 – or about a third of its current, mainly gas-fired capacity – as part of its emissions-reduction plans.
Vanda RE is still finalising the exact technologies it will use, but needs at least a 2 GW solar plant and a 4.5 GW-hour battery, said Vallabh, who is also chairman of Gurin Energy. Gurin Energy is only offering part of its own 75 per cent stake in the venture, he said.
That capacity would make the battery larger than any currently operating, although smaller than others at more advanced stages of development, BloombergNEF data shows.
“People talk about it being fanciful just because of the size of the project, but my first wind farm project was 30 megawatts (MW) in 2003, and that was big,” Vallabh said. “Today we’re doing 500 MW or GW – it’s just evolution.”
Singapore is aiming to decarbonise its power mix, but faces limits on building solar and wind farms because of its lack of available space. Authorities aim instead to import about 30 per cent of electricity by 2035, and in March also gave conditional approval to get 1 GW of renewable capacity from Cambodia.
Infratil, the Morrison-backed company behind Gurin Energy, said in September that Vanda would not require any specific financial commitment from Infratil.
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