Akaysha Energy has announced their latest project in Australia, the Orana Battery Energy Storage System (BESS), which will become one of the largest four-hour battery systems in the world, and it will be powered by Tesla Megapacks.
The Orana BESS will be located near Wellington, New South Wales, within the Central West Orana Renewable Energy Zone (REZ), and will add over 1,660MWh of storage capacity to Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM).
What makes this project notable is that Akaysha was able to raise AUD$650 million (C$601 million) in funding from 11 different banks, including the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), to complete the construction, making it the largest standalone BESS financing package ever secured.
One interesting aspect of the debt financing is a unique twelve-year deal with EnergyAustralia, a major energy generator and retailer. This agreement, the first of its kind for EnergyAustralia, allows the company to virtually manage 200MW of battery capacity, meaning they can pretend to charge and discharge a ‘virtual battery’ based on set daily limits, without actually operating the physical battery, which will be handled by Akaysha.
The Orana BESS, featuring Tesla Megapacks, will be developed by Consolidated Power Projects Australia, and is expected to begin commercial operations in 2026.
This is the second major deal for Tesla and its Megapacks in the last few days. Last week Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners, the developer of the Supernode project in Brisbane signed a new contract for additional Tesla Megapacks, bringing the total connection capacity to 500 MW, and the total storage to 1560 MWh.
