Queensland is getting one of its biggest batteries yet — built to steady the grid on its own

A battery this size is less a battery than a reservoir for sunshine. The Teebar project, about 300 kilometres (about 185 miles) north of Brisbane in Australia's Fraser Coast region, will store 1,600 megawatt-hours of electricity and deliver up to 400 megawatts at a time — enough to smooth out the dips when solar and wind fade. Owner Atmos Renewables has chosen Valo, a new venture built on Finnish firm Wärtsilä's technology, to install 444 container-sized battery units over a two-year build. The batteries are 'grid-forming', meaning they can sense a wobble in the grid's rhythm and respond on their own, without waiting to be told — a skill that matters more as coal plants retire.

SDG 7 · Affordable and clean energy — Mechanism: infrastructure build