Balance of plant (BOP) was delivered by Consolidated Power Projects Australia, with Australian-manufactured transformers supplied by Tyree Transformers and Wilson Transformer Company.<\/p>\n
Tony Fullelove, managing director of development and delivery at Akaysha Energy, said the project supports firming capacity as New South Wales absorbs more renewable energy generation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Orana BESS is set to play a major role in supporting firming capacity and grid reliability, allowing more renewable energy to be integrated into the NSW electricity system,\u201d Fullelove said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe virtual tolling agreement for the Orana BESS gives EnergyAustralia access to the market benefits of large-scale battery storage, including fast-response capacity and greater flexibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
The commercial structure underpinning Orana combines contracted capacity with participation in the merchant market.<\/p>\n
EnergyAustralia secured 200MW of the system\u2019s output under a 12-year virtual tolling agreement<\/a>, signed two years ago, which enables EnergyAustralia to notionally charge and discharge a 200MW virtual battery within pre-agreed bidding parameters, independent of Akaysha\u2019s physical operation of the asset.<\/p>\n Daniel Nugent, trading and transition executive at EnergyAustralia, said the structure delivers storage capability without requiring the retailer to own or operate infrastructure.<\/p>\n \u201cOur virtual tolling agreement with Akaysha gives us access to a large-scale battery\u2019s firming capability and the ability to soak up renewable energy that would otherwise be wasted, without owning or operating the asset ourselves,\u201d Nugent said.<\/p>\n As part of a portfolio mix, it\u2019s a model that helps get batteries financed and built and gets more storage into the market sooner.\u201d<\/p>\n The project also holds a Long-Term Energy Service Agreement (LTESA) awarded under NSW Roadmap Tender Round 2 in November 2023, which was also a pilot for the Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS) tender.<\/p>\n The LTESA provides access to minimum cash flows over a long contract term, reducing price uncertainty for investors and bringing forward investment in large-scale storage assets.<\/p>\n Commercial operations starting at the Orana BESS are the latest in a sequence of project deliveries that have consolidated Akaysha\u2019s position as one of the most prominent developers in Australia\u2019s energy storage sector.<\/p>\n In terms of storage capacity, Orana was the third-largest battery storage system in the NEM at the time of commissioning, behind Origin\u2019s 1,770MWh Eraring Battery 1<\/a> and Akaysha\u2019s own 1,680MWh Waratah Super Battery<\/a>, which has been working toward full operational status following a catastrophic transformer failure<\/a> in late 2025.<\/p>\n The Orana project was financed through a AU$650 million (~US$440.58 million at that time)<\/a> debt facility, closed in July 2024, with a syndicate of 11 domestic and international banks, including ANZ, CBA, Westpac, BNP Paribas, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Siemens Financial Services through Siemens Bank.<\/p>\n At the time, the deal was described as the \u201clargest standalone BESS project financing globally.\u201d The AU$650 million raise closed alongside the EnergyAustralia virtual tolling agreement, which was similarly described as the largest virtual toll contracted in the NEM to date.<\/p>\n Orana\u2019s COD follows the commissioning of Akaysha\u2019s 205MW\/410MWh Brendale BESS in Queensland<\/a> earlier in 2026, which reached full output five months ahead of schedule and features grid-forming inverters for rapid frequency response and ancillary services.<\/p>\n With Orana now operational, Akaysha\u2019s portfolio stands at more than 4GWh in operations, 1.2GWh under construction and approximately 40GWh in development globally across Australia, the US, Germany and Japan.<\/p>\n The BlackRock-backed developer has been\u00a0weighing funding options<\/a>\u00a0to support its battery storage expansion across Australia.<\/p>\n Our publisher, Solar Media (part of Informa Group), will host the\u00a0Battery Asset Management Summit Australia 2026<\/a>\u00a0on 25-26 August at Amora Hotel Jamison in Sydney.\u00a0You can find out more about the Summit on the\u00a0official website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Balance of plant (BOP) was delivered by Consolidated Power Projects Australia, with Australian-manufactured transformers supplied by Tyree Transformers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":769159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[365830,365831,64,63,314819,40363,43699,43700,30560,673,44,365832,43702,108551],"class_list":["post-769158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-akaysha","tag-akaysha-energy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-battery-energy-storage","tag-battery-storage","tag-bess","tag-energystorageaus","tag-nem","tag-new-south-wales","tag-news","tag-orana-bess","tag-storageaus","tag-tesla-megapack"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=769158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/769159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=769158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=769158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=769158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}