Saudi-backed developer secures finance for its biggest battery project to date

Fotowatio Renewable Ventures Australia (FRV) has found the money to start building its biggest battery yet, the Gnarwarre project in Victoria, a project that has been the company’s portfolio since 2021, and was first promised government backing in 2022. 

The new funding comes from the $1.2 billion whole-portfolio refinancing that was actually secured in July 2024, and almost exactly a year after the company told Renew Economy that construction on the Gnarwarre project would start “soon”.

The 250 megawatt (MW), 500 megawatt hour (MWh) Gnarwarre project is important because it will include grid-forming inverters, a detail that won it $15 million in funding under ARENA’s Large Scale Battery Storage Round in 2022.

Grid-forming batteries were picked by the market operator last month as one of the technologies it wants to use bridge the gap between traditional synchronous generation and inverter-based wind, solar and battery storage. The “grid forming” capacity means they can mimic many of the critical grid services provided by coal, gas and hydro generators.

To date, two grid-forming batteries with Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) contracts to deliver grid-stabilising services have starting doing their work on the grid, Edify Energy’s 150MW / 300MWh Riverine BESS in New South Wales and its 185 MW / 370 MWh Koorangie BESS near the town of Kerang in north-west Victoria.

Both are now operational and, importantly, paying their owners to maintain grid voltage and frequency.

Gnarwarre follows FRV’s other grid-forming battery, the nearby 100 MW, 200 MWh Terang battery energy storage system (BESS) which FRV reached final close on during August last year. 

That project is now being built. 

The latest funding commitment adds two new investors to the portfolio, KfW IPEX-Bank and Export Development Canada, which launched with 11 financiers behind it.

But reaching financial close on this project also marks a big moment for FRV, as Gnarwarre will be its second, and biggest, BESS to date in Australia.

That detail alone marks a major milestone for the company, owned by a Saudi investment fund and a Canadian infrastructure fund, as it looks to build out the storage side of its business, said FRV Australia managing director Carlo Frigerio in a statement.

The company now operates nine solar farms in Australia and New Zealand with about 1 gigawatts (GW) of capacity.

One of these is a small project in Queensland set up to test a solar-battery that shared a single connection, which was switched on in July last year. 

FRV bought the Gnarwarre project from Acenergy in 2021, around the same time as it bought Terang from the same developer.