Plan to build big battery in ex-premier’s home town will have to dodge abandoned gold mine shafts

A Chinese-owned developer, Pacific Blue, is seeking federal approval for a 201 MW battery project in Bendigo, Victoria. The site sits near abandoned gold mines, and planning documents reveal the installation will need to navigate dozens of old mineshafts to proceed safely. The project adds another layer of construction and operational complexity to battery deployment in regional Australia.

Where this fits

This story illustrates a hidden cost of the renewables-heavy grid: battery projects are being compressed into available land, often industrial or degraded sites, which carry their own infrastructure and geological hazards. Each complication, mineshaft remediation, site survey, engineering workarounds, adds cost and delays to the firming backbone the grid is supposed to depend on. The project also highlights a sovereignty issue: a Chinese state-owned corporation is building Australia's critical energy storage, embedding supply-chain and geopolitical dependence into the nation's transition.

What it means

Australia is outsourcing not only the manufacture of panels, inverters and batteries, all China-dominated supply chains, but now also the build and operation of storage that the grid needs to function when renewables don't. Each battery project, each transmission line, each processing facility raises the same question: how much of the energy transition can Australia afford to hand to a strategic rival? The Bendigo project will work around old shafts and proceed. But it underscores the real cost of a renewables-only path: weather-dependent generation needs firming, firming needs batteries, batteries need overseas capital and expertise, and that dependence is a security risk no megawatt-hour price can redeem.