The Brisbane Lions Australian Rules football club will install two 700kW/1,400kWh batteries, thanks to a grant from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).
The ARENA grant will allow the AFL teams’ home ground in Springfield to absorb solar from its own 770kW solar system as well power from the grid.
The power will be used to power the ground’s four light towers at night and a gym inside the facility’s community hub.
The bulk of the funding for the $5.7 million solar-battery system is coming from an energy management company owned by coal baron Trevor St Baker, Energy Decarb, which designed the system and will own the battery.
“This significant announcement of new infrastructure here at the Lions home stadium… will see the Lions reduce their energy bills and their emissions at the same time,” said federal energy minister Chris Bowen during a press conference on site at the ground.
“We all love footy, and we all love a night game, but I think we all understand that those lights suck a lot of energy. And if we’re going to get this transformation right, we need to all reduce our carbon footprint and the Lions are putting their money where their mouth is.”
The new system has the capacity to store about 520MWh of excess solar power each year, and is big enough to offset some 170 households’ peak demand.
“When the Brisbane Lions are playing televised events at Brighton Home Arena, the battery will discharge to reduce the peak demand at the site by up to 50 per cent,’’ Energy Decarb CEO Yvonne Macleod said in a statement.
“This will reduce the pressure and demand on the electricity network and the need for additional investment in the electricity grid over time.’’
The first battery will be operational in September.
Part of something bigger
The Lions project is part of a bigger project being coordinated by Hydro Tasmania’s energy retailer Momentum Energy, which was the recipient of the ARENA grant.
Momentum Energy received about $11 million from ARENA to build 39 batteries across Queensland, South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria, including the two at the Brisbane Lions’ HQ.
The funding was part of ARENA’s first community battery funding round, which closed last year. Round two has just opened today.
Other sites in the Momentum project include a major university, aged care homes, and small-scale agricultural solar farms – and one near the Lion’s ancestral home of Fitzroy, at the Collingwood AFL club.
Central to this project is hooking all of these batteries into Hydro Tasmania’s VPP.
“Using advanced algorithms, automation, and artificial intelligence, the Hydro Tasmania Virtual Power Plant gets individual assets to work together and enable them to respond to the demands of the market,” said Momentum Energy managing director Lisa Chiba.
