New Power New Era

samelvin2
Mar 21
3 min read

Collie's Big Battery

When most people think of Collie, they may picture the Collie River, the Wellington Dam, wildflowers, mountain bike trails, and our famous mural trail. But on a recent Synergy tour of Collie's Big Battery, I got a glimpse of something that's quietly reshaping the identity of this town and it's just as jaw-dropping as anything you'll find in the bush.

From 1931 coal to 21st century energy Collie continues to power Western Australia. The old MUJA Collie Power Station that familiar hulking silhouette on the edge of town is scheduled to close. But rather than leaving Collie behind, the state government has made a bold call: plant Australia's biggest battery right here, on the same land where cows and coal once reigned. The Synergy Collie Battery Energy Storage System (CBESS) is now fully operational, and the numbers are staggering. We're talking 500 megawatts of power and 2,400 megawatt hours of storage enough to power around 785,000 homes for over four hours. That's not a typo. It's one of the largest grid scale operational batteries on the planet. I'll post a link below of the mega construction site.

640 sea containers and a $1.6 Billion investment standing on site. During the Synergy tour, what strikes you first is the power grid and incoming and outgoing electricity. The battery is made up of 640 containerised battery units, imagine rows upon rows of large shipping containers, each one packed with lithium iron phosphate cells made by CATL, the world's leading battery manufacturer. Day in day out the trucks arrived with the white boxes and heavy wide loads, tackling the gradient of the Darling Escarpment, they now sit in neat rows right next to one of three power stations, a powerful visual of old energy meeting new. The whole project cost over $1.6 billion and created around 500 construction jobs, with local Collie & regional workers among those employed. For a regional town navigating a big economic transition, that's meaningful.

A cheerful tour group strolls along Throssell Street in Collie, where shopfronts glow with local pride in the town, long known for powering the state. Pic by Russell Ord

What It Actually Does

Here's the clever part and this matters for anyone who has rooftop solar at home. During the day, when the sun is pumping and solar panels across WA are generating more electricity than people are using, all that excess energy has to go somewhere. The battery absorbs it. Then in the evening, when everyone gets home and demand spikes, the battery discharges it back into the grid. Clean, stored energy, right when it's needed most. It's essentially a giant version of the home battery in your garage, just enough to power thousands of homes instead of one.

Collie: Still at the Heart of WA's Energy Story

What I love most as a guide is meeting people who are genuinely curious about our future and watching them leave with a fresh, renewed perspective.

Joseph stated during a coffee stop on a Mural Town Tour and his three days stay in Collie - The food is great, the preservation of heritage buildings and the new, but it's the people that make it!

Collie isn't getting left behind in the energy transition. The town that lit WA's homes through coal is now doing the same through stored sunshine and wind from roof top to roof top.

A haunting photo by Les Hunting. A starry night, now resting beside the opencut east of Collie Western Australia. Public viewing welcome

And that old 1966 coal power station?

The building that's been the backdrop of this town for generations? It's still standing across the landscape to its replacement. For now, it's a remarkable piece of living industrial heritage, and one day it might just become another landmark on the Collie mural trail.

If you're planning a trip to Collie its worth adding the opencut coal mine 18km west of Collie, where you can stand in awe of the BIG DIGGER 900 P&H Electric Shovel.

Collie has always been a working town. It just changed what it's working on.