This report provides a project summary of the Lake Bonney Battery Energy Storage System in the development, construction and commissioning phases.
Report extract
Development
While Infigen had been exploring the possibility of constructing a BESS in South Australia since 2015, the combination of market, portfolio and funding opportunities in 2018 meant that a business case for a BESS could be made.
The location chosen for the construction of the BESS was Infigen’s operational Lake Bonney wind farm, so that the existing site and grid connection infrastructure could be utilised. Co- location of the assets also offered the potential to reduce curtailed energy losses and manage the wind farm’s causer pays factor but required the BESS to be connected into a ‘weak’ area of the grid.
Tesla was selected as the preferred battery equipment supplier due to their use of lithium-ion battery technology, previous project delivery experience in South Australia, cost-competitiveness and the ability to earn market revenues using Tesla’s AutoBidder software. System sizing was determined by considering a number of factors, including capital costs, existing transformer capacity at Lake Bonney, and the hours of storage required to effectively participate in each market.
The development application process for the Lake Bonney BESS was straight-forward, given the existing nature of the proposed site. A single modification was required to the original development plan consent due to an optimisation of the site dimensions following detailed design.
