Battery storage developer Akaysha Energy says has locked in $650 million to build its four hour Orana battery in NSW, a project, in a deal that it says is the largest investment in a single battery anywhere in the world.
Akaysha Energy, the battery storage upstart backed by global funds giant BlackRock and which is also building the Waratah Super battery, another landmark project, says it has also secured a 12-year “virtual” offtake deal for a 200 megawatts (MW) component of the Orana project with EnergyAustralia.
“This ground-breaking and flexible offtake allows EnergyAustralia to virtually “charge” and “discharge” the 200MW ‘virtual battery’ to manage its price and load commitments to its customers, particularly during high demand periods,” says Akaysha Energy COO Paul Curnow.
That deal was critical to securing the funding for 415 megawatts (MW)/ 1660 megawatt hours (MWh) Orana battery, and it shows just how complicated financing is today for new energy projects.
The Orana BESS has long term energy service agreements with NSW and the federal government — it was named one of the winners of the first federal capacity investment scheme auction in November last year — and it has full NSW planning approvals, and the private offtake agreement with EnergyAustralia.
But even with those puzzle pieces in place, Akaysha had to bring 11 different funders together, with domestic support coming from ANZ, CBA and Westpac, and internationally from BNP, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, DBS, ING, Mizuho, Rabobank, Siemens Bank and SMBC.
The deal shows how massive renewable projects which require huge amounts of capital can be financed, even with a complex contracted offtake deal, says Akaysha Energy CEO Nick Carter.
“This announcement represents a significant achievement for Akaysha and marks a crucial step in our mission to rapidly deploy mega-scale BESS,” he says.
“Akaysha is now looking forward to the construction phase and moving rapidly towards COD [commercial operations date].”
Akaysha Energy’s total offtake agreements across its portfolio is now 1GW/2.4GWh. The Orana BESS will, for a time at least, be the biggest four-hour battery on Australia’s main grid, although it will be dwarfed by two even bigger four-hour batteries being built in Collie, Western Australia, by Neoen and Synergy.
The company and its portfolio was bought by Blackrock in 2022, after which Akaysha quickly landed one of the biggest prizes in Australian and global energy storage: the 850MW/1680MWh Waratah Super battery, which will play a key role as a giant “shock absorber” for the grid, particularly as coal fired power stations are phased out.
That battery is due to be complete in 2025.
Construction set to start
The latest funding round will be used to start building the two-stage Orana BESS, which abuts the Wellington solar farm in New South Wales’ (NSW) Orana-Central West renewable energy zone (REZ) and a TransGrid 330kV zone substation.
It comes on the back of another $250 million Akaysha Energy raised for its BESS portfolio more generally in April.
Akaysha Energy says full construction will start this quarter.
The company still expects the BESS to be operational by the second quarter of 2026 – despite AEMO pessimism that it’ll miss that deadline by six months.
In May, the NSW government said it was funding dedicated “squads” of engineers to connect delayed big battery projects as the state scrambles to get ahead of coal power plant shutdown deadlines.
Akaysha Energy said last year after winning the capacity investment scheme auction that four hour batteries were the new sweet spot for Australia energy storage because they can operate for longer during extended peak demand periods.
However, the original plan, outlined in the scoping report for the NSW planning application and on the project’s website, was for a BESS that could supply up to eight hours of energy storage.
Akaysha CFO Andrew Wegman says the latest round brings the total the company and its backer Blackrock have sunk into Australian clean energy to $3 billion.
As well as Orana and the Waratah Big Battery, Akaysha is also developing the 150MW/300MWh Ulinda Park big battery in Queensland, and the 200MW/400MWh Brendale BESS in the outer suburbs of Brisbane.
