Sodium sulfur battery project links Queensland to the grid

Queensland researchers have reached a milestone in powering Australia’s critical minerals refining industry, successfully delivering a grid-connected sodium-sulfur (NaS) battery energy storage system enabled by Queensland-made DC-DC converters.

The 250 kW/1.45 MWh battery has been commissioned at Lava Blue’s Centre for Predictive Research into Specialty Materials (PRiSM) in Brisbane as part of the QUT Queensland Energy Storage Technology (QUEST) Hub, a Queensland Government-funded initiative accelerating industry growth and development in the energy storage sector.

QUEST Hub Director Professor Joshua Watts, from the QUT School of Chemistry and Physics, said the successful commissioning of the grid-connected NaS battery energy storage system marks an important milestone for Queensland’s battery industry and for powering critical minerals refining from long-duration energy storage.

Unlike an earlier NaS battery demonstration in an isolated microgrid, the new system connects the technology to Australia’s National Electricity Market, showcasing its potential to support long-duration energy storage for powering commercial and industrial applications as well as supporting grid reliability.

NaS batteries provide six or more hours of energy storage and have more than two decades of commercial operating experience internationally, making them well suited to renewable energy firming, peak demand management and grid stability applications.

Image caption: QUT Professor Joshua Watts and Tom Buschkuehl, Managing Director Allset Energy. Image credit: Queensland University of Technology.

“The deployment has allowed the QUEST Hub program to successfully facilitate the commercial translation of a Queensland-made power conversion technology and reduce the energy costs associated with the refining of high-purity commodities from Queensland minerals for the global market,” Watts said.

The battery was installed by Australian engineering company Allset Energy at Lava Blue’s PRiSM facility, where it will support solar-powered processing of critical minerals into high-purity materials used across battery, semiconductor and advanced manufacturing supply chains.

“PRiSM is already demonstrating our novel mineral processing methods using hydrochloric acid (HCl), which is a more sustainable route in a post-fossil fuel age. Most conventional mineral processing methods use sulfuric acid which is primarily sourced from petroleum refining, an industry in structural decline. With the commissioning of our microgrid, the lifecycle emissions intensity of our high-purity materials are further reduced. This is what the virtuous cycle of renewable electrification looks like, when operations like ours, processing minerals into high-purity battery-grade materials using sustainable inputs, are able to be entirely renewably powered,” said Michael McCann, Managing Director of Lava Blue.

Australian-owned company Allset Energy delivered the battery installation from design through to commissioning, while Queensland manufacturer Advanced Converter Solutions (ACS) supplied locally developed and manufactured DC-DC converters that enable the battery system to integrate with high-voltage infrastructure.

More than 80% of the purpose-built control unit was manufactured using Australian content.

Top image caption: Battery commissioning at the Lava Blue Cleveland facility. Image credit: Queensland University of Technology.