Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners has submitted plans to the federal government for a 750MW battery energy storage system (BESS) co-located with a proposed polysilicon plant in Townsville, Queensland.
Global sustainable energy infrastructure investor Quinbrook has submitted the plans to the Australian government and is seeking approval under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.
The EPBC queue, administered by the Federal government, aims to protect nationally threatened species and ecological communities. The approval must be received before a project can be developed.Â
The duration of the BESS has not been disclosed, but documents submitted as part of the EPBC application revealed that Quinbrook intends to build the system in a staggered, three-phase approach. 250MW will be installed in each of these three stages and the system will be connected to the National Electricity Market (NEM).
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The polysilicon production plant in Townsville, called Project Green Poly, will have a metallurgical silicon (mgS) production capacity of up to 150,000 tonnes per annum and a polysilicon production capacity of 100,000 tonnes per annum.
Quinbrook intends for the project, which will span 200 hectares, to be a fully integrated supply chain that will convert mined quartz to metallurgical silicon, then to polysilicon, and possibly to ingots and wafers.
The company has previously said the project will support the development of solar photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing capability in Australia and help achieve the objectives of both the Queensland and Australia government’s renewable energy and critical minerals strategies.
Readers of Energy-Storage.news will likely be aware that Quinbrook has been developing numerous projects across Australia, most notably the ‘Supernode’ BESS project, an AU$2.5 billion (US$1.63 billion) data centre complex powered by locally generated renewable energy.
In September, BESS solutions provider GE Vernova was selected to deliver the BESS for the second stage of the project, which much like Project Green Poly, is also in Queensland.
Quinbrook had previously selected GE Vernova to provide the BESS for stage one of the project, which saw a 250MW/500MWh system contracted. Construction of this phase is currently underway.
In the final stage of the project, of which there are three, the battery storage system’s output will be increased to 2,000MW. Local planning permissions were secured in 2022 for four multi-tenant data centre campuses. Privately owned electricity generator-retailer Origin Energy has contracted the full capacity of stage one.
