Victoria’s State Electricity Commission (SEC) is investing up to AU$43 million (US$30 million) for a stake in the 400MW/1.86GWh Baranduda Electrical Energy Reserve near Wodonga, alongside superannuation fund Aware Super and developer Birdwood. The investment has secured the state-owned generator and retailer 50% of the battery energy storage system’s output through a 15-year agreement. The Victorian government described the deal as the first public-private partnership between the state and a superannuation fund to deliver a renewable energy project in Victoria, a structure that matters because it signals how public capital can be paired with institutional investors to accelerate storage deployment without full public ownership.
The battery will consist of four independent 100MW units, giving it a 4.65-hour duration, which the state government described as the longest storage duration of any battery in Victoria. It will be located next to the Wodonga Terminal Station and the Victoria-New South Wales electricity interconnector, positioning it to support grid stability across state boundaries. Construction is expected to begin in November 2026, creating around 150 jobs, with the project scheduled to begin operating in late 2028. The government has not disclosed the individual equity stakes held by Aware Super and Birdwood, nor the project’s total capital cost, leaving the full ownership structure and financing burden partly opaque.
The project was first fast-tracked through Victoria’s Development Facilitation Program in February 2025, when it was proposed at 400MW/1.8GWh with a 4.5-hour duration and pursued by Birdwood Energy alone in the existing industrial estate on Baranduda Drive. The programme is designed to speed up planning decisions for renewable energy and storage projects, with the government stating that battery and wind projects had previously spent as long as two years stuck in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal before approval. Victoria’s Minister for Energy and Resources, Jaclyn Symes, said the project would support the grid during periods of peak demand, adding that “Labor has delivered the lowest wholesale electricity prices in the country because we invest in renewables and big batteries.”
The SEC’s involvement in Baranduda extends an investment approach it has applied to other utility-scale battery projects in Victoria, typically taking a minority equity position and securing a share of output rather than fully owning and operating the asset itself. The SEC contributed AU$245 million in equity to the 600MW/1.6GWh Melbourne Renewable Energy Hub at Plumpton, developed jointly with Singapore-based Equis Australia, which began commercial operations in December 2025 as part of a AU$1.1 billion project that also drew AU$400 million in debt financing secured by Equis. The SEC has also moved into long-duration storage technologies beyond lithium-ion, partnering with Italian company Energy Dome to deploy a 20MW/200MWh compressed CO2 storage system at Hazelwood North in the Latrobe Valley, designed to discharge continuously for 10 to 12 hours. Both projects form part of the SEC’s broader programme targeting 4.5GW of new renewable energy and storage capacity across Victoria, of which Baranduda is the latest addition.
The evidence base for this development is limited to a single secondary source, Energy Storage News, which reported the announcement without corroborating documents or independent verification of the undisclosed equity stakes and total capital cost. The absence of those figures means the AU$43 million investment cannot be assessed as a percentage of project value or compared directly with the SEC’s AU$245 million equity contribution to the Melbourne Renewable Energy Hub. What remains to be watched is whether the 4.65-hour duration claim holds as the longest in Victoria once the project reaches operation in late 2028, and whether the public-private partnership structure with Aware Super becomes a template for future Victorian storage investments or remains a one-off arrangement.