More than 100 bids have been whittled down to six winners in the first tender to firm up the national electricity market.
Capturing otherwise wasted solar energy, Energy Minister Chris Bowen said on Wednesday the six successful big battery projects in Victoria and South Australia would come online by 2027.
"They will deliver nearly 1000 megawatts of storage by 2027. That is considerably more than the 600MW we went out to tender for," he told an energy conference in Traralgon.
Announcing the winning bids just up the road from one of the coalition's proposed nuclear reactor sites, Mr Bowen said benefits would start flowing to the regions immediately - not in 20 years' time.
He said many of the unsuccessful bids were also of high quality, and have been encouraged to rebid in the next tender, scheduled for the end of the year.
The Australian Energy Market Operator recently warned there will be reliability gaps over the next 10 years if renewable energy projects are delayed, as the nation needs to replace coal-fired power plants and meet rising demand for electricity.
Amid stalling investment, the capacity investment scheme intends to deliver an additional 32 gigawatts this decade to help get Australia to 82 per cent renewables in the grid by 2030.
The batteries selected for funding support can run for up to four hours, delivering a reliable flow of clean energy during peak demand, after storing surplus cheap solar power generated during daylight hours.
"Energy storage capacity is critical to keeping power prices down by storing cheap renewable energy when it's abundant and dispatching back into the grid when it's needed most," Victoria's Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio said.
EnergyAustralia’s Wooreen Energy Storage System, capable of powering 230,000 homes for four hours, will be built at the Jeeralang Power Station in LaTrobe Valley.
Springvale Energy Hub will be developed by Project Power on former landfill in south-eastern Melbourne.
In SA, the state at the forefront of bringing on big batteries, projects getting support include Pacific Blue's Clements Gap 60MW battery in the mid-north and EnergyAustralia's Hallett 50MW battery in Canownie.
Solar River battery storage will be part of a hybrid project operated by Zen Energy, located between Burra and Morgan, and Pacific Green will also operate a new Limestone Coast West 250MW battery near the border with Victoria.
SA Energy Minister Tom Koutsantoni said renewable energy, when firmed with batteries, can provide greater reliability and flexibility than once thought possible.
Rejecting the forced closure of baseload power and new transmission, the coalition plans to add nuclear power to the energy mix, to be built on coal power plant sites.
These include Loy Yang in Victoria, Liddell and Mount Piper in NSW, Callide and Tarong in Queensland, and smaller reactors near Collie in Western Australia and at Port Paterson in South Australia.
Nationals Leader David Littleproud said two projects in the mid-2030s - either small modular reactors or larger plants such as the Westinghouse AP1000 or APR1400 - would be followed by a build-out of others through to 2050.
"They will start producing electricity by 2035 - with small modular reactors - or 2037 if modern larger plants are found to be the best option," he said.
Critics say the nuclear plan could cost as much as $600 billion, take decades to build and supply a fraction of Australia's energy by 2050.
