Renewable energy producer Neoen Australia’s battery to offer grid stabilisation service

Neoen SA has won approval for its big battery in South Australia to provide inertia service to stabilise the grid, a world first for battery energy storage in the push to replace fossil-fueled generators, the French firm said.
Neoen’s 150-megawatt Hornsdale Power Reserve uses Tesla Inc.’s Megapack battery system and will now use Tesla’s Virtual Machine Mode to deliver inertia services, until now provided by coal-fired and gas-fired power plants with big turbines.
Inertia is key to the stability of grids and has become trickier to maintain with the influx of intermittent wind and solar power and the retirement of coal-fired plants. South Australia is the state most heavily reliant on wind and solar power.