ENGIE Australia has now fully acquired the Hazelwood battery energy storage system (BESS) in Victoria after buying out Eku Energy’s minority interest.
Engie now owns 100% of the the BESS—Australia’s first grid-scale battery developed at the site of the decommissioned Hazelwood Power Station.
Related article: One for the history books: Hazelwood Battery commissioned
The 150MW/150MWh Hazelwood BESS is Eku Energy’s seed asset and was successfully commissioned in June 2023 in collaboration and partnership with majority owner ENGIE Australia.
Both teams at Eku Energy and ENGIE Australia worked closely to develop the site with a clear commercialisation pathway in place which includes the ability to expand the existing Hazelwood project. Now in operation for 2.5 years, the project is supporting grid reliability in Victoria.
ENGIE Australia managing director of renewables and batteries Laura Caspari said, “Full ownership of the Hazelwood Battery allows us to progress our expansion plans as we pursue additional storage investments in Australia.
“This consolidates our commercialisation plans, including ongoing work to expand the battery capacity at the Hazelwood site.”
Related article: Australia’s largest privately-funded BESS to be built at Hazelwood
The divestment of interests in the Hazelwood BESS project to ENGIE Australia aligns with Eku Energy’s stated long-term objective of focusing on majority owned and operated assets in its portfolio of projects and delivering safe, secure and reliable energy storage assets.
To date, Eku Energy has a development pipeline of over 50 projects globally across the United Kingdom, Italy, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
