The role of community-scale batteries in the energy transition: Case studies from Australia's National Electricity Market

Australia's National Electricity Market (NEM) is currently undergoing a rapid clean energy transition, with battery energy storage systems (BESS) set to play an increasingly important role. This paper investigates the role of community-scale batteries (CSB) in the energy transition, through several business model case studies and a regulatory review. CSBs are found to be capable of delivering a range of monetised and unmonetised services but capturing them effectively is difficult. While regulations are already changing to enable whole-of-system services, future reforms, including network tariff reforms and capturing of local benefit, will be required if scalability for this mid-scale class of batteries is to be achieved.