FAQs
ABOUT THE BATTERY
Construction of the Muchea Battery will take around 16 months.
Once completed, the battery will be up to 200MW and together with its associated infrastructure will cover between 2 to 5 hectares of land. It will be no higher than 2.5 metres.
The Muchea Battery will be located near the existing Muchea Substation, approximately 2km north of Muchea.
The land is ideal because it is flat, in a rather isolated area and very close to the Substation.
The Muchea Battery will support in stabilizing the grid and the increasing number of renewable projects in WA.
The Muchea Battery will utilise Lithium-Ion batteries and associated equipment from leading manufacturers. These manufacturers are selected through a separate competitive tender process.
In principle, the facility will be an orderly arrangement of battery cabinets, inverters and control systems including electrical and data cabling. The battery packs are enclosed in custom designed, dust and waterproof ‘cabinets’ made of steel. The cabinet colour is white, or light coloured to assist with heat management and each cabinet has its own internal thermal management system.
Current battery technology come with an industry-leading 15-year warranty. The batteries usually have a 20-year lifespan. The batteries will still retain the majority of their capacity at this time and will be capable of operating beyond it depending on market conditions and other factors.
The Muchea Battery will store energy in times of high production and release energy in times of high demand, similar to how a battery on a home solar system works. It will also help to stabilise the grid in a few different ways – it has an emergency response mode to prevent blackouts and it can maintain voltage and frequency levels
In making the transition from fossil fuels to ‘baseload’ renewables, the ability to store and dispatch energy will play a key role. Pumped hydro is an example of longer-term storage; that is, suitable for storing energy and releasing it over days or weeks. However, pumped hydro has a relatively slow ‘ramping’ time and is less suitable for providing rapid-response services to grid contingency events such as outages or heat waves (with high demand created by air-conditioning). Battery storage, such as Tesla’s lithium-ion Powerpack technology, fills this key short-term role.
Below are some of the functions a grid-scale lithium-ion battery may be expected to perform:
- Essential system services including Load Following Ancillary Services (LFAS);
- System Restart Ancillary Services (SRAS)
- Arbitrage (spot market trading);
- Peak shaving;
- Block/load shifting;
- Renewable firming and smoothing.
ECONOMIC
The project will be privately financed by Neoen.
Muchea Battery can reduce costs for consumers in three ways:
- supporting more wind and solar, which are now the cheapest forms of power
- increasing competition in ancillary markets and pushing electricity prices down
- helping to avoid blackouts and the associated costs
It is expected the Muchea Battery will create a significant volume of construction jobs and a number of full-time ongoing positions.
We will also provide opportunities for local suppliers, businesses, schools, and community groups.
LOCAL
During construction, we expect some localised traffic, noise, and dust impacts. However, we will be managing these to minimise them as much as possible. Following installation, the battery will be visible at the site and will look like an enclosure of white containers.
As with most projects of this size, there will be some impacts. In this case they will be mostly during construction. We will work with the community, neighbours, and Shire to minimise these impacts. As part of the planning process, we will be undertaking noise, visual and traffic impact assessments.
We will be working with the community throughout the project to understand local concerns and aspirations, and ensure we minimise any impacts. We encourage the community to provide feedback through completing the survey.
A Community Benefit-Sharing Scheme will be established for the life of the project. We’re keen to hear from the community about what form this would take.
SAFETY & ENVIRONMENT
The project requires a development permit from the Shire of Chittering and Development Assessment Panels.
The Muchea Battery will meet all relevant standards for fire safety, and we are working with the local fire authority to ensure the project also meets their requirements.
Batteries, like all electrical equipment, require careful design to ensure that fire risk is mitigated and controlled. For the Muchea Battery the first line of defence for fire risk is to isolate any problem battery packs and prevent the problem spreading. The tesla megapack battery modules are all individually controlled and require a system-OK signal to remain active. If the signal is lost for any reason, the individual battery packs self-isolate and disconnect from the power inverters. As a secondary line of defence, these battery packs are housed in separate IP rated insulated cabinets that are designed to contain any overheating issues to the affected cabinet only. The battery is also monitored 24hours a day, and we are able to diagnose issues through the control system. As a final line of defence the site has on-site fire-fighting water and equipment.
All of the medium voltage and high voltage cabling associated with the battery is underground, protected from extreme weather and external shorts.
We make a commitment that all above-ground infrastructure will be removed, and the site rehabilitated when the project ceases to operate. After removal, a large percentage of the material in the batteries will be reclaimed or recycled; over 60% of materials especially critical minerals will be recovered for re-use.
The Muchea Battery is using similar technology to the batteries that are being increasingly installed in homes, just on a larger scale. There are no known health risks associated with properly maintained large-scale battery installations.
Monitoring of dust levels during construction is a basic requirement of each project. Dust generating activities are assessed during windy conditions and are stopped and rescheduled where adequate control of dust generation cannot be achieved.
Visual observation of machinery is undertaken during site inspections in addition to daily pre-start checks which ensure all machinery has appropriate emission control devices, is in good working order and is maintained correctly.
