NT plans big battery in Darwin to cut gas costs and accelerate solar.

The Northern Territory government has announced plans to spend $30 million on a big battery for the Darwin-Katherine grid, a move it says will pay for itself within five years because of reduced gas costs and help expand solar power and meet the 50 per cent renewables by 2030.

An artist's impression of the NT "big battery".

The announcement over the weekend follows an intense debate in NT energy circles over the past year about the need for a big battery in the main Darwin grid, which was supported by the government-appointed task force, and Territory Generation, and frustration over the slow response by the government to those calls.

Instead, the government regulator late last year endorsed a controversial push by network operator and system controller Power and Water Corp to effectively saddle all new large scale solar plants with their own batteries, even though the regulator acknowledged that a centralised battery would be the more efficient option.

Read the story from RenewEconomy by Gile Parkinson - “NT plans big battery in Darwin to cut gas costs and accelerate solar.”