Developer ACEnergy has seen its 350MW/770MWh Little River battery energy storage system (BESS) fast-tracked by the Victoria government in Australia.
The BESS is the latest project to be selected by the Victorian government to be fast-tracked via the Development Facilitation Program pathway.
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This initiative, which was expanded last year to include renewable energy projects, aims to speed up the development of critical infrastructure projects in Victoria. Before its inclusion, projects had to pass through the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, which saw around 20% of these projects delayed by around two years.
Over the past few months, the government has selected several BESS sites for inclusion in the scheme. For instance, in April 2025, Energy-Storage.news reported that Elgin Energy’s 500MWh Barwon Solar Farm, a solar-plus-storage site, had been selected for the initiative. The project is also located in the Little River region of Victoria.
Little River is located 44km southwest of the state capital, Melbourne. The BESS will be located on an 18-hectare piece of land and connect directly to Ausnet’s existing 220kv network infrastructure. It will connect to the National Electricity Market (NEM).
The project is expected to cost around AU$350 million (US$224 million) and create 55 jobs throughout its construction phase. The construction and commissioning phase will take around 24 months to complete.
Sonya Kilkenny, the Victorian government’s minister for planning, took the opportunity to hail the role of renewable energy in delivering low-cost energy bills, echoing the sentiments of the Labor Party, which won a landslide victory in the 2025 federal election at the start of the month.
“Renewable energy is the cheapest form of new build energy available – that’s exactly why we’re fast-tracking decisions on projects like this, to provide cheaper and cleaner energy for more Victorians,” Kilkenny said.
ACEnergy’s energy storage portfolio in Australia
ACEnergy has been active within Australia’s energy market for some years now and has a diverse portfolio of energy storage and renewable energy generation projects, namely solar PV, dotted across the country.
ACEnergy has several large-scale battery energy storage projects in development, including the Gara site. These are the 264MWh Apsley and 1,100MWh Yanco BESS, both located in New South Wales and the 550MWh Pine Lodge and 250MW Glenbrae BESS in Victoria.
Readers of Energy-Storage.news may well remember that the Yanco BESS was embroiled in controversy last year after the Leeton Shire Council rejected a voluntary planning agreement (VPA) offer submitted by the developer.
This was due to ACEnergy having submitted a VPA for a discounted amount totalling AU$730,000 over a five-year period. The traditional VPA, which, under Leeton Shire Council’s Section 7.12 Plan, amounts to 1% of the development cost, would require the developer to pay AU$2.5 million.
In August last year, ACEnergy saw its 350MW/700MWh Joel Joel BESS project in Victoria fast-tracked by the state government’s minister for planning, Sonya Kilkenny. It was processed under the new process in nine weeks. According to the project website, the development approval was estimated to take 18 months.
Developer Birdwood Energy saw a 1.8GWh BESS fast-tracked by the government last month via the same Development Facilitation Program. The initiative aims to speed up the development of critical infrastructure projects in Victoria.
