Worldwide interest in building the country's largest battery in South Australia
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The battle over who gets to build the nation's largest battery to secure power reliability in South Australia is heating up, with more than 20 expressions of interest received from Australia and overseas.
The proposal to build a battery with a 100-megawatt output was announced just over a fortnight ago as part of the State Government's $500-million power intervention plan.
Renewables company Carnegie Clean Energy is among those vying for the tender and said its partnership with Samsung and Lendlease had the potential to create more than 300 jobs in South Australia.
"The sort of people that we'll be looking to attract are electricians, mechanical fitters, electrical engineers," managing director Michael Ottaviano said.
"It's exactly the sort of skills that already exist in Adelaide that can be transitioned out of industries that are winding down."
Mr Ottaviano said his company's proposal would prevent a repeat of incidents like SA's statewide blackout in September and February's electricity load-shedding that affected 90,000 customers.
"In the event where you have, say, a generator go down in the system or a particularly strong level of demand on a hot day perhaps, or a confluence of both of those things, then we will make our battery available for the people of South Australia to avoid those load-shedding events," he said.
Mr Ottaviano said the company wanted to create a research and development hub in Adelaide and it could deliver the "first 100-megawatts of battery by summer".
He said the company had identified a "strategic location" in the Adelaide area for the battery project but was tight-lipped on exactly where that would be.
Carnegie said it delivered a similar project in California in just six months that used Samsung batteries.
SA Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis said California was "the fifth largest economy in the world in its own right".
"When they had an issue with a gas pipeline, they didn't turn to nuclear energy or coal. They turned to battery storage," he said.
"This technology is moving so quickly."
Expressions of interest in the project closed on Friday and the State Government said it had received submissions from Australia, US, UK, France, NZ, Switzerland and Hong Kong.
"These are high quality tenders who are attempting to create a new industry in this country," Mr Koutsantonis said.
Topics: electricity-energy-and-utilities, industry, states-and-territories, government-and-politics, sa, adelaide-5000
