Battery energy storage system (BESS) project developer Pacific Green Technologies has secured a AU$77 million (US$49.9 million) debt facility for projects in Australia.
The UK-headquartered company’s playbook involves developing large-scale standalone BESS assets in Europe and Australia. Pacific Green describes these developments as Energy Storage Parks, and in Australia in particular, most of its targeted opportunities are planned to have more than a gigawatt-hour of storage capacity per site.
Its latest move is to get financing commitments from Australian private debt investment manager Longreach Credit Investors and non-profit investment fund Australian Philanthropic Services Foundation.
The investors have agreed to provide the financing over a 24-month period. Pacific Green said it would go towards developing a 7GWh project pipeline and expanding the company’s platform within the booming Australian market.
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“This capital allows Pacific Green to expand our platform footprint and accelerate the development of our portfolio of BESS projects across the Australian National Electricity Market (NEM),” Pacific Green CEO Scott Poulter said.
Battery storage systems are the clean energy technology with the highest levels of reliability, according to the new edition of the annual Electricity Statement of Opportunities report from Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), which came out a few days ago.
Pacific Green was founded in 2016 and was active in marine exhaust scrubbing machinery before entering the energy storage space two years later. In 2021, it acquired the battery storage consulting business of Limejump, the UK-headquartered energy trader and BESS optimiser, the rest of which was bought up by Shell.
The developer then acquired the rights to its first two projects, both in the UK, a few months later. The first of those two projects, the 99.8MW/99.8MWh Richborough Energy Park in southern England, went online in late 2023, while the other, 250MW/375MWh Sheaf Energy Park is currently under construction on adjacent land.
Its BESS supplier to Richborough was Chinese battery manufacturer Gotion High-Tech. It has since signed a letter of intent (LOI) for the supply of 1,500MWh of systems at Energy Parks “across multiple jurisdictions” from Trina Storage, the BESS arm of Chinese solar major Trinasolar.
In Australia, Pacific Green announced its ‘strategic entry’ into the market in October 2023 with moves to secure land for 1GW/2.5GWh of Energy Parks in Victoria, which, at the time, it had hoped to move into construction during 2024 for commercial operation to start in 2026.
Since then, it has secured planning consent from the government of South Australia for its 500MW/1,500MWh Limestone Coast Energy Park in July 2024—which it has since sold to investor Intera Renewables for AU$460 million and signed up Trina Storage as supplier—applied for approval under Australia’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act, for its 1GW/2.5GWh Portland BESS in Victoria.
A few weeks ago, Pacific Green signed a 10-year tolling agreement with developer ZEN Energy for three Australian BESS projects totalling 1.5GWh of capacity at three sites, one in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, although the specific projects were not named in a company announcement.
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