Renewable energy developer and retail utility ZEN Energy has partnered with HD Renewable Energy (HDRE) to focus on developing energy storage and green hydrogen projects in Australia, Taiwan, and potentially Japan.
Under the terms of the strategic partnership, HDRE will subscribe for 9.7% of shares in ZEN Energy, which is headquartered in Australia, for AU$43 million (US$27.7 million).
In a statement released on Friday (8 November), the partnership will focus on developing storage assets in Australia, Taiwan and potentially other countries, with ZEN Energy specifying that Japan could be one such market.
Anthony Garnaut, CEO of ZEN Energy, said the partnership aims to help the company accelerate out of what he claims has been a “difficult year”.
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“Our strategy is to focus on storage asset development and operation to hedge against intermittency of renewable generation, such as the major wind drought that occurred in April/May this year,” Garnaut said.
Despite this difficult year, ZEN Energy has achieved several positive milestones. In early June, the developer started construction on its 138MW/330MWh Templers battery storage project in South Australia after clearing the grid connection approval process in “record time”.
ZEN Energy has secured a long-term electricity supply contract from Templers with the South Australian government and in March brought on board US-based infrastructure investor Stonepeak in a AU$70 million deal.
The battery energy storage system (BESS) arm of Chinese solar PV inverter manufacturer Sungrow is serving as the system integrator and BESS provider for the Templers project.
ZEN Energy also saw success in the recent CIS tender round in Victoria and South Australia which saw 3,626MWh of energy storage capacity awarded. Two of its projects, the 170MW/653MWh Solar River BESS and a 230MW solar PV hybrid project, located north of Adelaide between Burra and Morgan, were also successful in the CIS tender.
90GW of energy storage needed in Taiwan by 2030
Taiwan Cement Corporation (TCC) chairman Nelson Chang said in 2022 that Taiwan will need 90GW of energy storage by 2030 to integrate new renewable energy capacity. Several energy storage technology providers, such as Fluence, Invinity NHOA, are active in the market.
Earlier this year NHOA commissioned a 120MWh BESS in Taiwan for its parent company TCC.
It follows its commissioning of a 311MWh system by system integrator NHOA in December, the largest in Taiwan, which was specifically designed for the E-dReg ancillary service market as the firm said at the time. That was also for an industrial site of parent company TCC, which acquired a majority stake in NHOA from Italian utility Engie in 2021, with NHOA called Engie EPS prior to that.
