Wimmera Hybrid Storage Hub | Solar Powerstations Victoria

50 MW solar co-located with 100 MWh BESS—unified fire engineering, shared switchyard design and NEM bidding strategy aligned to Victorian DNSP rules.

Challenge

Hybrid registration required coordinated solar and storage protection studies, thermal envelopes and market interfaces—siloed designs would have failed commissioning.

Solution

Single SCADA philosophy, joint commissioning tests and conservative revenue stacking assumptions agreed before financial close.

Solar	50 MW AC
Storage	100 MWh / 50 MW
Location	Wimmera, Victoria
Role	Hybrid EPC & commissioning
Status	Operational

Challenge

Co-location shared land and permits but not automatic connection simplicity. Battery thermal management, container separation and CFA planning sat alongside solar civil works. Fire water and access roads had to serve both technologies without duplication.

Market registration categories for hybrid plant required early clarity on metering hierarchies.

Our approach

We unified inverter and battery control setpoints, specified metering boundaries for settlement, and bench-tested FCAS response before market bidding. Vendor interfaces were reduced to a single SCADA master to limit cyber attack surface.

Commissioning included coordinated solar curtailment tests while batteries provided FCAS previews.

Outcomes

Hybrid plant operational with documented availability derates and operator runbooks. Investors received sensitivity bands rather than single-point merchant promises. First-year operations confirmed hybrid dispatch rules within warranty limits.

Technical resolution detail

Thermal modelling informed container spacing and HVAC setpoints before summer commissioning. We rejected layouts that met datasheet minimums but failed walk-around maintenance access during 40°C Wimmera heat events.

Metering hierarchy was agreed with the DNSP and AEMO registration teams before hardware delivery, avoiding costly retrofit of settlement-grade meters. FCAS prequalification tests were scheduled with market operations staff to confirm response times under simultaneous solar curtailment.

Hybrid value is realised in control logic and metering clarity—not by bolting batteries beside PV without a unified operations model.

Measured results

50 MW solar and 100 MWh BESS commissioned with integrated SCADA and witness-tested protection
FCAS and energy dispatch within modelled availability bands in first operational year
Single emergency response plan covering both technologies for CFA and council
Investor reporting includes transparent curtailment and outage logging

Solar array and BESS containers—Wimmera hybrid hub.

Lessons for hybrid developers

Unified SCADA and single operations runbook reduced interface disputes between solar and BESS vendors. Revenue models now stress-test FCAS and energy simultaneously rather than assuming nameplate availability across all products.