State utility buys stake in new big battery, locks in November construction start

Victoria’s state utility has taken a stake in a new big battery, this time with more than four hours of storage, taking it closer to its target of underwriting 4.5 gigawatts (GW) of new renewables and storage by 2035 and helping to bring another battery project in the state to financial close.

Victoria energy minister Jaclyn Symes on Thursday announced the State Electricity Commission (SEC) has made a $43 million investment for a minority stake in the Baranduda Electrical Energy Reserve, a 400 megawatt (MW) battery with 1.86 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of storage proposed for near Wodonga on the NSW border.

The deal also includes a power purchase agreement for 50 per cent of the battery’s output for 15 years, which will be used to help supply its commerc ial and industrial electricity customers, with the remaining output to be sold on the merchant market.

For its co-developers Aware Super and local renewables outfit Birdwood Energy it provides the final piece of the investment jigsaw needed to finance and build the project that was last year fast-tracked through the state’s streamlined approvals process.

At 4.65 hours, the Baranduda project will claim – at least for now – the longest duration battery storage in the state, the government says, and also marks the first public-private partnership between the Carroll Labor government and a superannuation fund to deliver a renewable energy project in Victoria.

Construction on the battery, which will sit next to the Wodonga Terminal Station and the existing Victoria–NSW electricity interconnector, is expected to begin in November and start operating in late 2028. It will comprise of four separate 100 MW units.

“Labor has delivered the lowest wholesale electricity prices in the country because we invest in renewables and big batteries,” Symes said in a statement on Thursday.

“This big battery will be able to power more than 200,000 Victorian homes through the evening peak while creating around 150 jobs during construction.”

The battery deal is a welcome bit of progress in what has been a turbulent week for Victorian Labor, which has been marching back policies – including in the energy portfolio – ahead of what promises to be a tough election in November.

Over the past seven days the Carroll government has scrapped one of the state’s more contentious proposed Renewable Energy Zones, and has launched a “reassessment” of the economics of the Western Renewables Link, a contested transmission project that is key to Victoria’s renewables plans.

The battery deal is also a welcome win for the SEC, which has been subject to threats of abolishment from some members of the opposition, but which is enshrined in the Victorian Constitution, so needs a majority vote in both houses of state parliament to get rid of it.

“Through our 15-year offtake, SEC is excited to play a critical role in bringing this important project forward for Victorians and securing the delivery of the state’s longest duration, utility scale battery,” SEC CEO Chris Miller said on Thursday.

“The battery’s strategic location will also bolster Victoria’s energy security by enabling increased electricity flows during periods of high demand, network congestion, or unexpected outages, delivering more affordable, reliable renewable energy for Victorians.”

The utility’s first move into asset ownership was a 2023 co-investment with GreenPoint Energy (formerly Equis) in the Melbourne Renewable Energy Hub (MREH), a 600 megawatt (MW) battery made up of Tesla Megapacks and offering between two and four hours of storage duration.

Miller, who was formally appointed as the CEO of the SEC in August 2024, played a key role in securing the $245 million equity position in MREH, and has described the battery as a “standout investment” that has contributed significantly to Victoria’s electricity mix since powering up last year, ahead of summer.

The SEC is also currently co-developing the Renewable Energy Park in Horsham, which is being built in two stages, starting with a 119 MW solar farm and then adding a 100 MW, two-hour battery energy storage system (BESS).

And it is working with OSMI Australia on the Delburn Wind Farm, a 205 MW project that, once complete with be Victoria’s first 100% publicly owned, utility-scale wind farm, south of the Latrobe Valley in Gippsland.

In a presentation in June, Miller told the Australian Energy Week 2026 conference in Melbourne that medium to long duration storage – between four and 12 hours – had become a key area of strategic focus for the SEC, particularly in light of the 2028 retirement of the Yallourn coal plant.

“The next challenge we see is seasonal balancing and providing backup during those extended periods of low solar and low wind,” he said at the time.

“What we’re seeing at the moment in that zero emissions, long-duration space is there’s not a lot of development activity, so the concern we have is we’re not going to have a pipeline of projects … ready to get to [final investment decision] for the period that we know we’re going to need it.

“So to that end, we are … progressing some interesting development partnership opportunities with [original equipment manufacturers] of zero emissions firming technologies,” Miller said. 

“We’ll have a bit more to say about that later, but we’re progressing well into a joint development partnership with at least one OEM.”

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