“This business has been focused on energy storage since the day it was conceived some six years ago,” said Simon Kidston, Executive Director of Genex Power at an investor webinar held this morning to deep dive the company’s Large-Scale Battery Strategy. The business case for energy storage has grown significantly over that time.
Genex recently diversified its development of energy storage, from the original slow-burn 250 MW/2000 MWh Kidston Pumped Hydro Project — under development as part of the Kidston Clean Energy Hub on the site of the disused Kidston Gold Mine in Far North Queensland — to include the Bouldercombe Battery Project (BBP)
A two-hour-duration (50 MW/100 MWh) installation of 40 Tesla Megapacks, BBP will be built on land leased from transmission provider Powerlink beside its Bouldercombe substation, 20 kilometres south of Rockhampton.
Kidston said today the deployment of capital ($55-60 million in total CapEx costs including financing costs, owner’s costs and contingency funding) into Bouldercombe diversifies the company portfolio by both geography and technology, and anticipates a growing need for energy storage to balance the intermittency of renewable solar and wind generation, and “make it firm and reliable for consumers as and when they require the energy”.