Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners has received environmental clearance for its Supernode North battery energy storage system (BESS) project in Queensland, Australia.
The Australian Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) determined on 17 March that the 780MW Supernode North BESS and Substation qualify as a “not controlled action” under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, clearing a key regulatory hurdle for the project.
The facility will be located in Woodstock, approximately 45km south of Townsville, on a 41-hectare site spanning two adjoining allotments and the Bidwilli Road reserve.
Quinbrook stated that the project area comprises former Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) agricultural research land that was previously used for cropping and grazing studies.
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Supernode North is designed to facilitate electricity supply for future development within the Lansdown Eco-Industrial Precinct (LEIP), including components of the Northern Quartz Campus (NQC) project, a metallurgical silicon and polysilicon manufacturing facility identified as strategically significant for Townsville’s industrial diversification.
The BESS will utilise lithium-ion battery technology housed in containerised units, with each container measuring approximately 2.4 meters wide, 6.1 meters long, and 2.9 meters high.
The facility will include bi-directional inverters to convert direct current to alternating current when exporting electricity and vice versa when importing, along with transformers to step up the voltage to the plant’s internal reticulation voltage.
Supporting infrastructure will include a substation housing electrical equipment such as switchgear, circuit breakers, protection and control systems, and metering and communication systems.
The project will also feature water management infrastructure, with stormwater runoff directed to a basin east of the BESS site for treatment and detention before being released into Four Mile Creek.
Supernode North represents Quinbrook’s second major BESS development in Queensland, complementing the company’s Supernode project at the South Pine substation in the Brendale area near Brisbane, approximately 1,200km south of the Townsville site.
The original Supernode project at South Pine has already achieved significant operational milestones. In early 2026, Quinbrook commenced commercial operations for the 260MW/619MWh Stage One, which is now delivering its full output to the Queensland electricity grid and the National Electricity Market (NEM) under a 12-year tolling agreement managed by Origin Energy.
Located adjacent to the central node of Queensland’s electricity transmission network, the South Pine facility is positioned where approximately 80% of the state’s electricity flows daily.
Construction is ongoing for stages two and three at South Pine, which will increase total capacity to 780MW/3,074MWh by 2027. Quinbrook has also announced plans for a Stage Four expansion, currently in pre-construction, which is expected to host the first deployment of Quinbrook’s EnerQB long-duration energy storage (LDES) solution, developed in partnership with CATL.
Quinbrook plans to deploy approximately 3GW of EnerQB technology across Australia, equivalent to 24GWh of storage capacity, with the South Pine Supernode project serving as the initial deployment site.
