Horizon Power, an electricity supplier owned by the Western Australian state government, has begun to deploy and operate community battery energy storage systems to allow more residential solar power generation facilities in nine remote towns in the state.

(Horizon Power cuts the ribbon for the upcoming Marble Bar battery energy storage system)

The 31 million Australian dollars (22.76 million US dollars) plan is called "Regional Urban Energy Storage" and is funded by the Western Australia (WA) government through its Western Australia Recovery Plan. These nine battery energy storage systems will add more than 9MWh of energy storage capacity to the local grid.

According to Horizon Power, the battery energy storage system will store excess power from solar power facilities, otherwise it will be wasted, and enable approximately 3,000 households in the state to deploy 3kW solar power systems on their residential roofs and reduce the state’s Carbon emissions and electricity costs will save an average of A$1,275 per household per year.

The company has opened three battery energy storage systems and held a community ribbon-cutting event on November 10. The 582kW/583kWh battery energy storage system, located in Marble Bar Township, East Pilbara, Western Australia, will be deployed with solar power generation facilities with an installed capacity of 100kW. The battery energy storage system can maintain grid stability.

The Marble Bar battery energy storage system is deployed in the town of Marble Bar, which is recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the hottest in Australia, where the temperature exceeds 37°C for more than 100 consecutive days in a year. This battery energy storage system supplements the town’s existing large-scale solar farm with a generating capacity of more than 1GWh.

The project was installed by the local renewable energy developer Hybrid Systems Australia and will be put into trial operation on October 27, 2021. This time it will require a 60-day reliability test and is expected to be fully operational early next year.

The other two electric energy storage systems deployed in Wiluna and Yalgoo towns are 291kW/365kWh and 194kW/219kWh respectively. Reliability tests are currently underway. The tests are expected to be completed before the end of this year and will be put into use early next year.

Bill Johnston, Minister of Energy Deployment of Western Australia, welcomed the opening and operation of the battery energy storage system in Marble Bar, and pointed out that the "Regional Urban Energy Storage" plan will release more than 10MW of additional residential solar power generation, which will reduce the local area by 13,000 tons of carbon emissions per year.

He said, "The launch of the project will also support economic development and provide opportunities for local installers to install more solar power systems for customers."

The battery energy storage projects in the plan will be deployed in the next few months, most of which will be completed in mid-to-late 2022, while the largest battery energy storage project (4,300kW/4,391kWh) planned to be deployed in Broome Town is still in the design stage, it is expected that the deployment will be completed by the end of 2022.

Horizon Power pointed out that in most selected regional towns, battery energy storage systems are needed to store additional residential solar power generation.

Onslow, another small town in Western Australia located in the service area of Horizon Power, made headlines in the clean energy industry earlier this year, when it was proven to be completely powered by clean energy during the 1 hour and 20 minutes demonstration period. This is achieved by combining 700kW residential solar power generation facilities and 600kW ground-mounted solar power generation facilities, battery energy storage systems at customer sites and substations, as well as distributed energy resource management systems (DERMS) and microgrid control technologies.

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