A group of WA industry professionals has bought ownership of what is shaping up to be the state’s largest battery energy storage system (BESS) at Kemerton from its Chinese owner.
The WA consortium, known as Glasterra, has bought the Kemerton BESS from China’s Trina Solar, which is one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of solar panels.
Glasterra is led by managing director Mark Knox, who conceived the Kemerton project and brought in Trina Solar as an owner in 2022.
Since then, the project has progressed its engineering design and secured key development approvals and a network access agreement with Western Power.
Early contractor involvement (ECI) works are underway to refine the design, delivery strategy and cost certainty ahead of construction.
The new owners are aiming to start construction in November this year.
Before that occurs, the consortium needs to secure additional equity funding and lock in debt funding for the project, which Mr Knox said has an expected value north of $500 million.
The project has a nominal capacity of 330 megawatts
Crucially, it is being developed around an eight-hour duration configuration – double the duration of the early BESS systems built at Kwinana and Collie.
That means it will have a proposed storage capacity of about 2,700 megawatt hours, capable of supplying the equivalent of 180,000 homes for a day.
Mr Knox said the project’s attributes includes its proximity to an existing 330kV terminal.
He added that the state government’s Clean Energy Link upgrades aligned strongly with the project and would help unlock private sector investment in the sector.
Clean Energy Link has a total budget in excess of $3 billion and involves upgrades to Western Power’s transmission network.
It includes a $55 million upgrade at Kemerton to replace a transformer with a higher capacity unit.
As well as Mr Knox, the founding directors and owners at Glasterra include accountant Shane Crommelin, who heads up Elevate Accounting and Modus Capital.
Westforce Construction directors Phil Clarke and Paddy Kearns are also founders and investors in the business.
Their company has completed some 260 projects worth $850 million.
The Kemerton BESS is one of several prospective battery projects that will add to those already built by Neoen, Synergy and Alinta in WA.
The batteries will play a critical role in delivering grid stability as WA moves toward more renewable energy generation.
They are designed to store power when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining and release that power at times of high demand.
Neoen is currently building another 150MW battery at Muchea and Atmos Renewables is building a 100MW battery at Merredin.
Three further projects got a boost early this month when they won a tender for the federal government’s Capacity Investment Scheme.
They include Trina Solar’s Killawarra solar farm and battery, to be built near Three Springs in the Mid West.
Frontier Energy and Enpowered were also successful.
The winning projects all plan to integrate their BESS with either a solar farm or wind farm, in contrast to Kemerton which is just a battery.
