Waratah BESS tests its full SIPS capacity on Wednesday morning 9th September 2026

Yesterday afternoon we came across a RenewEconomy article that noted that the 850MW Waratah Super Battery began testing its full SIPS obligations.

The unit has not been capable of this since the well-publicised transformer failure that occurred on Saturday 18th October 2025 — which was later reported as a ‘catastrophic failure’ of one of its three 350MVA transformers, with a second transformer de-energised as a precaution and the unit left operating with a capacity of 350MW. The second transformer was returned to service on 10th April 2026, lifting availability to 700MW, and the replacement for the third was energised last week.

As part of its eventual SIPS obligations, the battery is contracted to inject up to 700MW of power within milliseconds of a network contingency — with the paired Metz SF, Sapphire WF and Tumut 3 units simultaneously ramping down, which is what allows the transmission lines feeding Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong to be run closer to their limits.

Source: ez2view’s Unit Dashboard widget, trended over the four days to 10th September 2026, with data for the 10:05 dispatch interval on Wednesday 9th September (NEM time) highlighted in the right table.

The screenshot above is from our ez2view software, and the right-hand panel is set to the 10:05 dispatch interval on Wednesday morning. We can see that this was the first interval where the unit’s power output reached 700 MW. It appears the testing ended at around the 12:20 dispatch interval later in the day.