Gamuda Renewables has secured an interest in the 1,800MWh Hazelwood North solar-plus-storage project from Latrobe Valley-based developer Manthos Investments.
Marking the Malaysian infrastructure group’s entry into the Victorian energy market, the transaction is subject to approval from the Foreign Investment Review Board. Financial terms have not been disclosed.
The Hazelwood North project is an approved 450MW hybrid solar and battery energy storage development spanning 1,100 hectares between Morwell and Traralgon in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley.
The facility is designed to pair 450MW of solar generation with a 4-hour, 1,800MWh battery energy storage system (BESS). Construction is expected to commence in 2028, with commercial operations targeted in 2030, pending a final investment decision.
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Planning approval was granted in September 2024 through Victoria’s Development Facilitation Program. At the time of its approval, the Hazelwood North project was the largest proposed solar PV power plant in Victoria, being developed by Manthos Investments, a family-owned Latrobe Valley business, on a 1,100-hectare property utilising excess grid capacity left by the closure of the Hazelwood coal-fired power station in 2017.
Gamuda Renewables chief strategy and development officer Jarred Hardman said the acquisition captures where the energy transition is heading.
“Hazelwood North marks a significant milestone for us – not only as our first Victorian asset, but as a project that captures exactly where the energy transition is heading. The opportunity to expand the project to include a data centre is something both Manthos and our team are genuinely excited about,” Hardman said.
Gamuda Berhad is listed on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange and currently operates across nine countries.
Data centre co-location as a strategic dimension
A stated strategic objective of the acquisition is the potential to co-locate a data centre on the Hazelwood North site, directly powered by on-site solar and battery storage.
Manthos and Gamuda Renewables said they are actively exploring a project expansion to include a co-located data centre, with the BESS positioned as a buffer during periods of variable generation, reducing dependence on the shared transmission network and offering data centre operators a dedicated, clean power supply from a single integrated asset.
The model aligns with Victoria’s own stated ambitions to attract data centre investment, and with the broader national debate about how to ensure data centres bring a new generation rather than drawing on capacity already committed to other consumers.
The Latrobe Valley location offers access to significant existing transmission infrastructure built to serve the coal-fired generators that formerly occupied the region, providing a grid connection advantage for large, constant-load facilities.
Energy storage has been recognised as several technologies that could be stand to benefit from the accelerating rollout of data centres across the globe, especially in Australia.
Speaking exclusively to ESN Premium at the Energy Storage Summit Australia 2026 earlier this year, Jeff Monday, chief growth officer at Fluence, predicted that once standardised battery storage blueprints are finalised with hyperscale customers in the US, deployment in Australia will accelerate rapidly, describing the data centre battery storage opportunity as a “slingshot” moment for the market.
The data centre opportunity for battery storage has been developing for several years, but the pace of AI infrastructure buildout is compressing timelines.
Indeed, battery storage can serve data centres in multiple ways (Premium Access): replacing diesel generators for backup power, smoothing demand to reduce peak grid charges, and enabling facilities to participate in grid services markets, all of which improve both the economics and the environmental profile of data centre operations.
Gamuda Renewables’ accelerating Australian footprint
The Hazelwood North acquisition is Gamuda Renewables’ third asset in the National Electricity Market (NEM), following the company’s entry into Australian renewable energy development in September 2024.
The developer set an initial target of 1-2GW by 2029, which it says it has achieved in under two years, and has since revised its ambition upward to 5GW of assets under development, construction and operation by 2031.
Gamuda’s Australian construction arm, DT Infrastructure, is also the EPC contractor for Edify Energy’s Smoky Creek and Guthrie’s Gap solar and storage projects in Queensland, both of which are set to be powered by CATL technology.
The Hazelwood North project also connects Gamuda Renewables to the Latrobe Valley’s industrial transition narrative.
The region hosted Australia’s first large-scale battery storage system, built at a decommissioned coal plant. As Energy-Storage.news reported back in 2024, Eku Energy’s 150MW/150MWh Hazelwood BESS became the first grid-scale battery in Australia to be built at a former coal-fired power station, repurposing the site’s transmission infrastructure for storage rather than generation.
The Hazelwood North Solar Farm sits on adjacent land and will draw on the same grid infrastructure that served the former power station, continuing a pattern of renewable energy and storage development on and around the former coal generation footprint.
Interested in Australia? Read Energy-Storage.news’ Energy Storage Summit Australia coverage and related content.
