Planning Amendment Regulation 2022

Battery storage facilities store excess electricity generated from renewable energy or the electricity grid and distribute it back into the network during peak periods. They can improve the efficiency of the energy system and keep prices low by better integrating variable renewables. These facilities are necessary because they support energy security and reliability.

Battery storage facility is now a use term that may be included in a planning scheme.

This enables a local government to amend its planning scheme to incorporate the new use term and determine appropriate categories of development and assessment and relevant assessment benchmarks, in a way that responds to the local circumstances.

This will provide a clear assessment pathway for battery storage facility uses once implemented by local planning schemes.

The inclusion of a new use term for battery storage facility enables a local government to amend its planning scheme to decide and include provisions to support the way in which they seek to regulate the use, including categories of development and assessment and assessment benchmarks. Once implemented, applicants will be able to apply for the development of a battery storage facility using the new use term. If no amendments are made the use will remain impact assessable in the same way an undefined use is assessed.

Any changes to the category of assessment and development for battery storage facilities will be subject to the local government progressing an amendment to their local planning instrument to incorporate the new term.

The Amendment Regulation provides for certain small scale battery storage facilities to be unable to be made assessable development by a local planning scheme. This applies to:

• pad-mounted batteries up to 15m² in footprint
• pole-mounted batteries up to 2m³ in size.

The changes do not remove the need to comply with all other relevant laws or standards including for example, electrical safety, or workplace health and safety, nor does it remove the requirement to obtain building approvals or comply with requirements under other legislation, such as in relation to fire safety.

Yes. Where battery storage facilities are ancillary to other uses, they are not intended to be separately regulated by the new use term. Examples may include:

• household batteries where stored energy is to be used on the premises
• batteries associated with commercial/industrial uses where stored energy is to be used on the premises.

Determining whether the battery storage facility is ancillary to another use must be determined on a case-by-case basis.

Key features of an ancillary use in the planning framework are:

• it must be related to the primary use
• it must have an exclusive functional relationship to the principal use
• the portion of the use determined to be ancillary is subordinate to the primary use both in terms of its scale and impact.