Neoen’s Blyth battery will soon be the biggest battery project in South Australia.
It has recently been registered in the Australian Energy Market Operator’s Market Management System, paving the way for its testing and commissioning for use.
Its construction was backed by $17 million from Arena’s Advancing Renewables Program for its role in enhancing grid stability through innovative technologies like grid-forming inverters.
According to Geoff Eldridge from Global Power, the Blyth battery energy storage system (BESS) is just the second new battery to be registered as a Bidirectional Unit (BDU), allowing it to both charge and discharge energy to support the grid.
The Blyth battery, which is being built by Neoen at the same time as the state’s biggest wind project to date, the 412MW Goyder South wind farm near Burra. The Burra project reached financial close in February, closely followed by the first concrete pours and delivery of battery components later that month.
The Blyth battery’s main reason for being is to provide “24/7 power” to the country’s biggest copper mine, BHP’s Olympic Dam – power that will be almost entirely sourced from the first stage of the Goyder South wind project.
BHP acquired Olympic Dam, located 560km north of Adelaide in South Australia in 2005 and quickly looked for ways to expand, delivering a draft economic impact study for public scrutiny four years later.
The copper resource at Olympic Dam (a livestock watering hole named after the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games) is considered the world’s fourth largest, and its uranium resources number one in the world.
There is also more than a decent amount of gold and silver at Olympic Dam, and the expansion sailed through state and federal government approval.
In 1998 the mine poured its 500th bar of gold. Two years later the mine produced 200,000 tonnes of copper in a year for the first time.
600 tonnes of copper and 12 tonnes of uranium oxide are produced every day in production.
Olympic Dam is an underground mine. Some 12 million tonnes of Sulfur dioxide from the copper minerals is made into sulfuric acid and used in uranium processing.
Kalari Transport started in Portland Victoria over 45 years ago and is part of the Swire Group of companies headquartered in London.
Using Kalari, Olympic Dam transports smelted copper, and drums of uranium oxide, from the mines to Port Adelaide down the highway through Snowtown.
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Source: South Australia’s biggest battery Wednesday, August 21, 2024
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