ACS advances through its Australian subsidiary Cimic in the business of developing electricity storage infrastructures connected to the grid. It has done so by winning a contract in Australia for the design and construction of a complex known as The Collie Battery, equipped by Tesla and consisting of a super battery capable of powering entire cities.
In this case, the new complex will be dedicated to stabilizing the electricity transmission network and allowing the massive incorporation of renewable energies in an area with a lot of wind and solar resources. It will work when the wind is blowing and the sun is not shining over a large region of Western Australia.
The Collie Battery is designed to reach a future power output of 1,000 megawatts (MW), equivalent to a nuclear power plant. It will be built in blocks of just over 200 MW, initially, from the end of 2024, with the capacity to supply electricity for around four hours to a wide region. A Spanish provincial capital consumes about 10 MW every hour.
ACS has received the order from the Neoen company, consisting of the construction of the first phase of this large complex, of 219 MW. It will be in charge of erecting a substation, a new plant and the systems to install the storage modules known as Tesla2 XL Megapacks. He will also build a bridge and access roads.
“Battery storage systems play an essential role in the reliable supply of energy that contributes to Australia’s aspirations to achieve net zero emissions,” says ACS CEO Juan Santamaría.
Within its new strategy, ACS has proposed to compete for projects related to battery factories and the transition from the automotive sector to electric cars. The United States, Europe and Australia are three regions in which it concentrates its efforts.
In recent months, it has won two important contracts in the United States to build battery plants for electric cars, in both cases through its subsidiary Turner. The most recent has Panasonic as a client and consists of a factory in Kansas for 3,800 million euros. At the end of last year another contract was awarded with Honda and LG to build another complex of 3,400 million.
Together with two partners, Kokosing Industrial and SSOE, it will also take charge of designing and building a material factory for electric car batteries in Kentucky valued at around 950 million euros.
