Australia’s 1,770MWh Eraring Battery 1 commences commercial operations
- Özcan Berk Atakan
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
Australia has reached a major milestone in its energy transition with the start of commercial operations at Eraring Battery 1, a 460 MW / 1,770 MWh grid-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) located in New South Wales. The project is owned and operated by Origin Energy and is directly connected to the National Electricity Market (NEM).
With 1,770 MWh of storage capacity, Eraring Battery 1 is currently the largest operational battery in the Southern Hemisphere by energy capacity. Designed to deliver close to four hours of discharge at full power, the system is capable of absorbing excess renewable generation during periods of high solar or wind output and releasing that energy during peak demand.
The battery is built adjacent to the former Eraring Power Station, allowing the project to leverage existing transmission infrastructure. This significantly reduces grid connection costs while accelerating deployment — a strategy increasingly used in coal-to-clean transition projects worldwide. From a grid-operations perspective, Eraring Battery 1 provides much more than energy arbitrage. It delivers frequency control ancillary services (FCAS), fast-response capacity, and system strength support, all of which are critical as Australia’s power system continues to integrate higher shares of variable renewable energy.
Eraring Battery 1 represents only the first phase of a much larger development. The overall Eraring BESS project has approvals that could ultimately lift capacity to around 700 MW and over 3 GWh, positioning it as one of the most significant storage hubs in the Asia-Pacific region.
For Australia, this project underscores how utility-scale batteries are becoming core infrastructure rather than supplementary assets. As coal generation exits the system, assets like Eraring Battery 1 will play a central role in maintaining reliability, smoothing price volatility, and enabling deeper renewable penetration across the NEM.
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