One of Australia’s biggest battery storage developers completes its first project

Akaysha Energy, the Blackrock-backed company that has rapidly emerged as one of Australia’s biggest battery storage developers, has announced the completion of its first big battery project.

Akaysha has taken the Australian battery storage market by storm, winning a tender to build the country’s – and quite likely the world’s – most powerful battery in NSW, and a string of other projects that have boosted its total storage under development to more than 6 gigawatt hours.

Now it can claim the full completion of its first project – the 155 megawatt (MW), 298 megawatt hour (MWh), Ulinda Park battery in Queensland’s Western Downs region, which is fast emerging as a hot spot for battery storage and other renewable projects.

Ulinda Park is underpinned by a unique 10-year battery revenue swap agreement with Re2, a climate risk transfer platform, that allows Akaysha to keep operational flexibility to optimise its bidding across energy and frequency control markets.

Ulinda Park will now be supersized following the successful tender win in the federal government’s Capacity Investment Scheme, with an underwriting agreement for an additional 195 MW, 780 MWh of capacity that will take the total project size to 350 MW and about 1,078 MWh.

“With Ulinda Park up and running, and the CIS-backed expansion progressing, we’re turning the Western Downs into a major storage hub,” Akaysha CEO Nick Carter said in a statement.

“That means a steadier grid for Queenslanders and new tools for retailers and big energy users to manage risk and keep energy costs under control.”

The battery is one of two Akaysha projects – along with the 850 MW, 1680 MWh Waratah Super Battery – that is sourcing battery units from the now bankrupted US-supplier Powin.

Construction and installation of both projects was complete before Powin filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year.

Waratah was supposed to be the first completed project for Akaysha, but ran into problems just hours away from finishing its final tests in October because of a “catastrophic” failure of one of its transformers.

That has limited its output to just 350 MW and 700 MWh, meaning that it can only service around half of its “shock absorber” contract with the NSW government, designed to increase capacity on the transmission lines feeding into the state’s major load centres.

Akaysha hopes that the issues can be resolved, and the transformer rebuilt – by May, although it is likely suffering a serious dent in anticipated revenues because of the delay.

Akaysha is also working on a number of other projects, including the nearly complete 205 MW, 410 MWh Brendale battery in Queensland.

It is also working on the 415 MW, 1,660 MWh Orana big battery in NSW, which has an underwriting agreement with the state, and which has now just entered the market operator’s grid management scheme, meaning it can soon start work on the commissioning phase.

It has also signed a long term “virtual tolling” agreement with the federal government owned Snowy Hydro for the 300 MW, 1,200 MWh Elaine battery in Victoria, and has landed $460 million in finance for the project.

All up, Akaysha has around 6,000 MWh of battery storage projects in Australia, which briefly allowed it to overtake the more established Neoen as the biggest developer of battery storage projects in the country – based on project operating, in commissioning, under construction or committed.

However, Neoen has since reclaimed that mantle with the announced doubling in size of the Western Downs battery to more than 2,300 MWh, making it one of the biggest batteries in the country.

See: Australia’s 10 biggest battery storage projects – and what they are paid to do

Akaysha says Ulinda Park is located adjacent to existing high-voltage infrastructure, and leverages the Western Downs transmission hub that was built for conventional generation, and which isn now repurposed to firm local solar and wind and reduce curtailment, as well as other grid services.

Consolidated Power Projects, Hitachi Energy, and Wilson Transformer Company also worked on the project.

Akaysha, which was established in 2021, says it now has more than 210 staff, with offices in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Tokyo, Portland and Houston, and projects also in the US, Japan and Germany.

See also: Two new big batteries energised on grid, underlining speed and scale of storage rollout

See also Renew Economy’s Big Battery Storage Map of Australia for more information.

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