Even before it was built in 2017, much was being written and said about the world’s largest battery – the Hornsdale Power Reserve Battery Energy Storage System (HPR), located near Jamestown in South Australia.
Now the HPR battery system has been operating for a few months, AEMO has released a paper presenting an overview of the initial period of operation and lessons for the future of the HPR and other battery storage systems.
Initial observations show that the HPR is capable of providing a range of valuable power system services, including rapid, accurate frequency response and control.
Rated at 100 megawatts (MW) discharge and 80 MW charge, the HPR battery has an energy storage capacity of 129 megawatt hours (MWh). This means the HPR battery is able to provide 100 MW of services into the NEM, for a duration of 1.29 hours.
The HPR is registered to provide all eight Frequency Control Ancillary Services (FCAS) markets and the paper summarises its performance in these markets so far. We have also highlighted potential learnings for future battery storage developments and their participation in frequency response markets.
This is the first time regulation FCAS has been provided in the NEM by any technology other than conventional synchronous generation, and AEMO has found that it is both rapid and precise.
The HPR is also included in a new control scheme intended to prevent the likelihood of the South Australian power system separating from the rest of the NEM as a result of a sudden increase in flow on the Heywood Interconnector. The control scheme is expected to be fully commissioned in the second quarter of 2018, and this paper summarises how it is designed to work.
To view the full paper please click here (pdf, 322 KB).