Hepburn Energy’s 5MWh community battery, “Bessie”, arrived last Friday. Bessie is co-located with the wind turbines Gusto and Gale on Leonard’s Hill, just outside Daylesford, and is located just below Gale. It has a capacity equivalent to around 400 household batteries.
Hepburn Energy (formerly known as Hepburn Wind), is a co-operative, with almost 2000 shareholding members, many from the local region and a much wider pool of supporters. Bessie will be 100% community owned and operated, like the wind turbines, and was made possible due to partial funding from the Federal Government’s Community Batteries for Household Solar program, which provided a grant of $500,000.
The co-operative was established in 2007 as a wind farm. Its ambition has evolved to have plans to include the establishment of a co-located solar farm and battery storage to complement the wind turbines. Bessie’s arrival is an important milestone for this proposed expansion and will provide the storage needed for the facility to manage market risks.
Bessie is only the size of a 20 foot container, but incredibly dense at a whopping 43 tonnes, which meant a large crane and 4 semi-trailers were required to cart all of the pads and weights and lift the battery into position.
Hepburn Energy reports that everything went smoothly thanks to the collaborative effort from Ballarat Cranes, Big Hill Cranes, All Point Customs and O’Brien’s Electrical.
In the coming weeks, the remaining equipment – the SMA DC-DC converters and transformers – will arrive on site, and installation and commissioning will occur in the months afterwards.
This article is based on a media release from Hepburn Energy.
