Ampyr seeks investors in gigawatt-scale battery as it rolls out network of micro batteries

Singapore-backed Ampyr Energy is seeking investors to buy into the first of its two gigawatt scale battery projects in Australia, as it also rolls out a network of sub-5 MW mini batteries across the network.

Ampyr is led in Australia by Alex Wonhas, the former senior executive at the Australian Energy Market Operator who led the development of its Integrated System Plan, the multi-decade planning blueprint to shift the country’s main grid from coal to renewables, and is a strong believer in the benefits of battery storage.

The company’s first big projects in Australia, as Renew Economy reported in February, are two gigawatt scale projects at Wellington in the central west of NSW and near Bannaby, south of Sydney.

It is for the first of these, a proposed 400 MW, 1,000 MWh facility at Wellington – across the road from Lightsource bp’s Wellington and Wellington North solar farms – that Ampyr is holding out its funding hat, mandating Azure Capital to seek equity stakes in the first stage of the project, which could be sized at around 300 MW and 600 MWh.

According to a flyer viewed by the AFR’s Street Talk column, Ampyr expects to contact most of the battery’s capacity with various customers, with the remainder tapping into the merchant markets.

A second stage of the battery could be sized at 100 MW and 400 MWh. Although the project is located within the Central West Orana zone, and was not allocated grid access rights in the tender results announced last week, it can go ahead any because it can plug directly into Transgrid’s 330 kV Wellington sub station.

Ampyr is owned by Singapore-based AGP Sustainable Real Assets, which boasts US-based Stonepeak as one of its major backers.

Stonepeak has already expressed interest in Australia storage assets with a joint bid for Genex Power with software billionaire Scott Farquhar’s Skip Capital in 2022. That bid was called off, but Stonepeak has since invested in en Energy’s Templers battery that is being built in South Australia.

Ampyr, meanwhile, is also rolling a series of sub 5 MW batteries across the NSW network, catering for new interest in trading houses in market volatility in the state’s wholesale electricity market.

The 5 MW batteries are favoured because they face less onerous connection requirements and are quick to build, assuming they can find land and a spot on the grid.