German solar and storage developer ib vogt has received state planning approval for the 120MW/480MWh Wagga North battery energy storage system (BESS) in New South Wales, Australia.
The Wagga North BESS will be built on a 26.94-hectare site within the Wagga Wagga Special Activation Precinct near Bomen, with a battery storage footprint of approximately 4 hectares.
The system will utilise lithium iron phosphate (LFP) chemistry batteries and will connect via an underground cable to the Transgrid Wagga North Zone Substation, located immediately to the north of the project site.
Access infrastructure includes upgrading the Byrnes Road and Bavin Road intersection and sealing Bavin Road.
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The project will operate with a 4-hour duration, delivering 480MWh of storage capacity from 120MW of power output. Construction is expected to support approximately 90 jobs over a 12 to 18-month build period.
ib vogt has been active in Australia since 2016 and has developed and sold around 450MW of renewable energy and storage projects in the country, including the 90MW Sebastopol solar project approximately 350km southwest of Sydney.
The Wagga Wagga Special Activation Precinct is a designated economic development zone where the NSW government has undertaken prior master planning and community consultation, streamlining the approvals pathway for projects within its boundaries.
The project was originally scoped by Zen Energy before ib vogt progressed it through to development application and received the planning determination. Last week, it was reported that Zen Energy had appointed voluntary administrators after its retail business failed to secure a viable buyer.
The Wagga North approval arrives as New South Wales faces a mounting gap between its contracted storage capacity and the volume required under the state’s updated targets.
ib vogt announced a further 120MW solar-plus-storage project near Deepwater in the New England Renewable Energy Zone in March 2025, incorporating agrivoltaics to allow sheep grazing among the solar arrays, with construction expected to begin sometime this month.
That project forms part of the wider Denman Renewable Energy Hub alongside a separate 4.8GWh 2-hour duration BESS.
Moranbah solar-plus-storage project receives grid connection approval in Queensland
Developer Zero-E Australia and its parent company Grupo Cobra have received 5.3.4A Connection Approval from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) for the 145MWac Moranbah solar-plus-storage site in Queensland.
The approval, confirmed by grid connection engineering firm OSA Engineering, covers a 145MWac solar PV facility coupled with a 50MWac battery storage system, located near Coppabella in Queensland’s Bowen Basin.
The plant uses an AC-coupled hybrid architecture with grid-forming inverter technology, placing it among a growing cohort of Australian solar and storage projects specified to provide active grid stability support rather than simply generating and exporting power.
Section 5.3.4A of the National Electricity Rules sets out the process that generators must follow before they can operate in the National Electricity Market (NEM).
Achieving this approval requires extensive power system modelling, including electromagnetic transient studies using power systems computer-aided design (PSCAD) and load flow analysis using power system simulator for engineering (PSS/E), along with performance validation and negotiations with AEMO and the relevant network service provider, in this case, Energy Queensland.
OSA Engineering said the process involved close collaboration between the project team, AEMO and Energy Queensland across all stages of the technical assessment.
The 5.3.4A approval is the connection milestone that confirms a project can connect to and operate securely within the NEM while maintaining system reliability.
It does not itself authorise construction to begin, but it removes the primary technical uncertainty that sits between development approval and a final investment decision and is typically one of the last formal steps before a project proceeds to procurement and construction contracts.
This section was first published on our sister site PV Tech under the item ‘Zero-E Australia secures 5.3.4A approval for 145MWac solar-plus-storage site’.
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