Adelaide-headquartered solar and electrical construction company Solmech has delivered a hybrid retrofit at the 4.1 MW Warnertown Solar Farm in South Australia, replacing six of the site’s Sungrow PV inverters with hybrid alternatives, each paired with a 200k Wh Powerkeeper battery unit, adding a total of 1.2 MWh of new storage capacity.
Located about 215 kilometres north of South Australian capital Adelaide, the Warnertown Solar Farm was built in 2001 and initially comprised a 2.5 MW ground-mounted PV system. A 1.6 MW second stage was added in 2023.
With the asset owner looking to maximise the value of the existing infrastructure, Solmech teamed with Chinese PV inverter and energy storage technology manufacturer Sungrow to add battery energy storage at the site.
Previously operating with 30 Sungrow SG110CX PV inverters, the facility was upgraded with six of the PV inverters replaced with SH110CX hybrid inverters, each paired with a 200 kWh Sungrow Powerkeeper battery.
Sungrow said integrating energy storage directly on the DC side avoids the need for transformer modifications, reduces project complexity, and significantly lowers investment costs, enabling faster deployment and stronger commercial returns.
“South Australia’s strict grid compliance rules often require lengthy approvals and transformer upgrades when adding AC-coupled batteries,” the company said. “Sungrow’s DC-coupled hybrid solution helps minimise these challenges and supports a smooth integration.”
Sungrow said the upgraded system has been designed to maximise the value of the solar farm, allowing it to operate more intelligently within South Australia’s dynamic wholesale electricity market.
“Battery storage can capture surplus solar generation and discharge energy when it is more valuable, helping the asset respond more effectively to changing generation conditions and electricity market signals,” the company said.
Solmech co-founder Newman Mundy said the upgrade had been seamless from installation through commissioning with the existing inverters simply swapped out for the new hybrid technology, while the design ensured the new equipment fitted within the existing shelter and required virtually no civil modifications
“The retrofit was really straightforward,” he said. “We simply replaced the existing inverters with hybrid units and added the PowerKeeper batteries. The compact design made installation fast and efficient.”
Sungrow technical support engineer Rock Liu said the Warnertown project demonstrates the company’s ability to tailor its storage solution to site-specific constraints including available grid capacity, transformer limits and site layout.
“Every site comes with different constraints, whether it’s available grid capacity, transformer limits or site layout. This upgrade shows we can tailor PowerKeeper to fit within those constraints and still deliver strong benefits for the owner,” he said.
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