Territory Generation is considering building the world's second largest battery to supply reliable, renewable power to Darwin and Katherine in the Northern Territory.

The NT Government-owned power company foresees a battery of 25 to 45 megawatts.  That's less than half of the Tesla battery in South Australia, but the proper scale considering the number of homes and businesses relative to the size of the grid. 

"The system itself is only a couple of hundreds of megawatts or so, so it's going to have a significant impact if it's operated in the way that it's needed," said Dr. Ariel Liebman, from Monash University's Energy Materials and Systems Institute, to the ABC.  "Now that batteries are coming into their own, they're cheaper than they used to be and they're actually much faster-responding than thermal generators, so it would add an additional tool to the toolkit of the power system operator," he added.

Territory Generation expects the battery to supplement power needs during periods of significant solar PV capacity loss, such as on cloudy days.  Right now, abut one in ten homes in NT have rooftop solar power.  The company expects that to grow to one in three homes over the next eight years.