“And this is a signal to anybody who is interested to invest in Victoria, in Australia: come to Victoria, the door is always open, our ambition is your ambition.”

A grid-scale battery consists of rows of domestic or vehicle lithium-ion batteries installed together. As the market for home batteries and electric vehicles ramps up globally, more factories are expected to come online to supply them, forcing prices down.

Batteries can be placed at strategic sites around the grid, to inject bursts of power to fill gaps in dispatchable supply. They will allow the nation’s existing power supply to be used more efficiently to serve greater demand. The Big Battery will pump power into the grid when there is a shortfall, make it more efficient to share power between NSW and Victoria.

The Big Battery is three times bigger than the initial size of the Tesla big battery built in South Australia in 2017 by billionaire Elon Musk.

One of the Tesla megapack batteries caught fire in July and burnt for three days, prompting fears the project could be derailed.

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The battery is owned by French company Neoenand delivered in partnership with Tesla, AusNet Services, UGL, Downer, the Australian Energy Market Operator and the Andrews government

Louis de Sambucy, managing director of Neoen in Australia, said he was confident this project would help the state reach its target of powering the network with 50 per cent renewable energy by 2030.