Perth and Bunbury to home 18 community batteries to soak up excess rooftop solar power

Nearly 20 community batteries will be installed across Perth and the South West to capture excess solar power from rooftop panels and feed it back at peak times.

A joint $25 million venture between the Federal and State Government’s will see 18 community batteries installed by mid-2027.

The metropolitan area will home 13 of them, including suburbs like Cottesloe, Canning Vale, Byford and Balcatta while the remaining five will be built in Bunbury.

Each of the Perth-based batteries will be able to power between 130 and 150 homes, while the 5 larger South West batteries will contribute to powering around 3600 homes.

Once all 18 batteries come online they will be able to hold 6.6 megawatts of storage capacity, which will come from excess power from solar panels during the day and be distributed back to the grid at peak times without sunlight.

Energy and Decarbonisation Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson said the batteries would provide greater stability in the renewables side of the energy grid.

“It’s a (cloudy) day like today where rooftop solar isn’t going to be firing on all cylinders and that’s why we need this storage capacity in our system to ensure system reliability and security for West Australians,” she said.

“These are really critical pieces of infrastructure in our energy system now, and Western Australia is leading the nation in utility scale batteries.”

Federal Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy Josh Wilson said WA and Australia were among the best in the world on implementing battery storage.

“We need to capture abundant solar energy, particularly in the middle of the day, and redeploy it at that evening peak,” he said.

“The most significant thing that I think Western Australians, and Australians more broadly, should hold on to is that Australia is fast becoming one of the leading nations in the world when it comes to the deployment of storage systems.”

Ms Sanderson also backed the current set up for WA’s power, rejecting calls for Alinta to provide residential power, as suggested by the company this week.

“There are absolutely no plans for the State Government to open a contestable market for small-use customers, I’ve been very clear with Alinta about that, and there are no plans to do that,” she said.

“There’s no evidence from those markets in the eastern states that that benefits consumers, the best thing that we can do for consumers is keep Synergy and Western Power in public hands.”