Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners has unveiled plans to build Australia’s largest battery storage facility – 2000 MWh – to support a massive data storage center near Brisbane in south-east Queensland.
The 800MW/2000MWh “Supernode” battery project proposes to support the data center, provide shippable services to the grid, bolster additional renewable energy capacity and act as a “backstop” to reduce the risk of power outages in Queensland.
The project is separate from the 1,000 MWh Lockyer battery storage project that Quinbrook also plans to build in Queensland, as part of plans that will instead convert a proposed peak gas facility into battery storage.
The project is one of a number of large-scale battery storage projects now being proposed in Australia, and it would be the largest if it went ahead now, although it could also be broken down by competing projects.
Quinbrook says the project site, adjacent to the South Pine substation in Brendale, offers unparalleled power access and redundancy with the support of three separate high-voltage transmission links.
The site will also intersect the new Torus dark fiber data cable currently under construction which will connect Brisbane directly to the international submarine cable recently landed in Maroochydore from Guam.
Coupled with the company’s planned multi-tenant campus of up to four hyperscale data centers, Quinbrook says the large battery, high-capacity power connections and renewable energy will deliver significant cost savings to future data center customers.
Quinbrook is also committed to acquiring, developing and building the renewable energy delivery capacity that Supernode customers need as their energy demand increases.
The company is one of Australia’s largest and most ambitious energy investors, and recently announced his “return” to the Australian market following the transition in the federal government from the coalition to Labor – marking its plans to approve the largest battery on the East Coast.
At a media briefing in May, immediately after the election, company president and co-founder David Scaysbrook gave a scathing assessment of the previous coalition government’s policies: “We gave up,” he said.
“Queensland can now compete more aggressively with the rest of Australia on cost, sustainability of operations and latency to attract leading data storage operators and lay the necessary foundations for the next digital age,” Scaysbrook said Friday.
“As residents of Queensland, the founders of Quinbrook are delighted that we can play our part in supporting the power grid at a critical stage in the state’s energy transition when prices are high and volatility is high.
With Supernode, we will help attract new digital industries to come here and thrive sustainably by using locally sourced, low-cost, carbon-free renewable energy and excellent data connectivity,” said Scaysbrook.
“This is the critical communications infrastructure that the forward-thinking industry in this state needs and it is
represents a competitive advantage in achieving Net Zero operations at a low cost that the
envy of competitive economies around the world.”
The Brendale, Queensland project follows the green data center campus developed by Quinbrook in Temple, Austin, where the first phase became operational last month.
The Queensland Supernode BESS adds to several major battery projects Quinbrook is currently developing in the US and UK, including the $2 billion+ Gemini solar+BESS project in Nevada, which it says recently closed the largest-ever funding for a single US renewable energy project.
In the UK, the company is building a 230MW/460MWh facility to are located on the site of a former coal-fired power station†
In Australia, a gas project peaking at Quinbrook in Queensland’s Lockyer Valley developed under the former federal government’s failed Underwriting New Generation Investment program. since turned into a battery storage project†
Giles Parkinson is founder and editor of Renew economyand is also the founder of A step off the grid and founder/editor of the EV-focused the driven† Giles has been a journalist for 40 years and is a former business and deputy editor of the Australian Financial Review.
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