Queensland will get its biggest battery system to help back up its rapid growth in solar and wind power thanks to a 15-year deal involving retailing giant AGL Energy.
The $120 million system to be built at Wandoan by independent power developer Vena Energy will have a capacity of 100 megawatts and store 150 megawatt-hours of energy, enough to power 57,000 homes.
It will be the same size as the Tesla battery in South Australia, which is the biggest in the country.
AGL Energy, which is attempting to pivot towards renewable energy despite holding significant coal assets, will have the right to buy all the output from the Wandoan battery when it is completed in 18 months.
Energy Minister Anthony Lynham said the utility-scale battery – the fifth in the state – confirmed Queensland as a renewable energy powerhouse, with $5 billion worth of projects in the pipeline.
"Queensland's renewable energy storage is steaming ahead and the next wave is battery storage," Dr Lynham said.
"The climate-change deniers criticise renewable energy for not being available when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. Batteries are a game-changer."
The Palaszczuk government – which is aiming to reach 50 per cent renewable energy in the coal-rich state by 2030 – has financially supported a string of renewable projects to get them off the ground.
Dr Lynham said the Wandoan battery was a private venture but state-owned network company Powerlink would help connect it to the grid when it was completed in 18 months.
The lithium-ion battery will be connected to Vena Energy's $650 million, 1000 megawatt Wandoan South solar project which will open in 2021.
The Queensland deal is the second major storage contract for AGL. In November, it struck an agreement to access four large batteries to be built by Chinese-Australian firm Maoneng Group in NSW.
Mr Redman said then that such storage plants would be pivotal in providing "firming" capacity in the transition from baseload power to renewables.
"We are staring at the dawn of the new age of energy – battery storage," he said.
He has made it clear that AGL will be a major participant in the expected 3 gigawatts of grid-scale battery storage to be installed in Australia by 2030.
AGL has several other storage projects in the works, including a proposed 50MW battery at Broken Hill under a program with the NSW government and more than 500MW of pumped hydro storage plants in the pipeline, in South Australia and NSW.
Liddell closure looms
"More broadly, we have $1.9 billion of energy supply contracts completed or in construction and another $2 billion in the pipeline, subject to feasibility and stable policy settings, which will all help to put downward pressure on prices for customers," Mr Redman said.
AGL has been involved in a tussle with the federal Coalition government over the future of the Liddell coal-fired power station.
As the Morrison government awaits the findings of the Liddell taskforce from the Department of Energy, Mr Redman said he had no plans to extend the Liddell power station whose life has already been extended to April 2023.
"It's a very old plant, it's more than 50 years old, and we are routinely finding issues with this plant that nowhere else in the world have found because it is such an old plant that has nothing to compare to," he said in Brisbane on Wednesday.
"It is getting to a point where to extend its life would require significant further investment and we continue to put forward that the 2022-23 schedule is the right point of view from an economic point of view and a safety point of view."
As the NSW grid deals with supply issues over the long hot summer, Mr Redman said it confirmed the market needed more capacity.
"We'd all like to see some more depth in the market. The answer for energy reliability and to keep costs down is good quality investment," he said.
