NSW approves BayWa r.e.'s Bullawah wind farm, its battery cut from 2,000 to 718 MWh
Serguey Asael Shinder2 min readThe New South Wales Independent Planning Commission has approved BayWa r.e.'s Bullawah Wind Farm, a hybrid wind and battery project in the state's south-west, Energy-Storage.news reported. The approval was announced on 2 October and ends a planning process that drew sustained opposition for more than two years.
What was approved. Up to 804 MW of wind from 141 turbines with a 300-metre tip height, paired with a 358 MW / 718 MWh battery. The site is about 28 km south-east of Hay inside the South West Renewable Energy Zone, across the Hay Shire, Murrumbidgee and Edward River council areas.
A smaller battery than first proposed. BayWa r.e.'s original design specified a four-hour, 500 MW / 2,000 MWh battery; the approved version is a two-hour system. In a variation to its federal environmental referral, the company attributed the change to its own analysis of how much storage this part of the zone needs. The turbine count fell over the same period from 170 to 141, shrinking the footprint from just over 1,000 hectares to 656.
How it was decided. The case went to the Commission under a special ministerial ruling, with no right of appeal to the courts. That route was introduced in planning reforms meant to stop drawn-out legal challenges from parties outside the host community. The approval carries conditions on maintaining and upgrading roads used by heavy construction traffic and requires a management plan for the Plains-wanderer, a threatened grassland bird that featured heavily in objections.
Built in stages. BayWa r.e. holds transmission access rights for only about 262 MW of the project. EnergyCo, the state body delivering renewable energy zones, confirmed Bullawah as one of four projects granted access in the South West zone's first competitive process, alongside Origin Energy's Yanco Delta, Spark Renewables' Dinawan Energy Hub and Someva's Pottinger Energy Park, together 3.56 GW. The project is therefore likely to be developed in phases, with more capacity pursued if the surrounding network is upgraded.
What it means
The planning approval is for 804 MW, but the grid has granted access to roughly a third of that. Across renewable energy zones, the binding constraint is increasingly the access right, not the consent, and the halving of the battery's duration shows developers sizing storage to the connection they can get rather than to the original plan.