A letter from the US miner raised hope that the jarrah forest inland from Perth would escape its strip mining for bauxite, but Alcoa is keeping its options open.
Grid-scale batteries are an increasingly important part of Australian power grids, with growth driven by plummeting prices and the surplus of daytime solar generation that can be used in the evening.
The state-owned utility needs to replace the generation capacity it will lose by closing down all its coal-fired power stations over the next four years.
