An announcement was made on Friday by CEP Energy to build the World’s Biggest Battery. This comes on the back of similar announcements from other market participants in recent weeks.

This announcement is a little bit more political as the location of the 1,200MW battery is in the same location as where Scott Morrison proposes to build a new 1,000MW Gas Powered generator.

The project at Kurri Kurri in the Hunter Valley will add to CEP’s plan to build a large-scale rooftop solar and batteries VPP including 1,500MW of generation and a 400MW battery over the next 5 years. The location has the benefits of being located in an industrial precinct with connection into the NEM via an existing sub-station.

The location of the big battery is ideal for the connection of any form of generation which led to the site selection for the Morrison Governments Gas turbine but as CEP is chaired by former NSW Labor Premier Morris Lemmer and its CEO is an ex-Macquarie bank executive the reasoning for the site could be political.

If the big battery is installed it will effectively limit the capability for the federal government to build its Gas turbine.

Chairman Morris Lemma has endorsed the NSW Clean Energy Roadmap and highlighted that batteries would play a major role in filling the gaps left by the gradual retirement of coal and gas-fired generation assets.

The Kurri Kurri battery will be built in stages, with first generation expected in 2023. By 2023, if all planned batteries get built, the Kurri Kurri battery will be competing with AGLs suite of 1,000MW battery and other batteries across the NEM totaling over 2,500MW.