Australian investment firm Washington H. Soul Pattinson (Soul Patts) has injected $40 million (USD 26 million) into North Harbour Clean Energy, acquiring a one-third stake in the Sydney-headquartered renewables developer and securing one or two board seats.
The Australian Financial Review reported Soul Patts, which has holdings across resources, healthcare and infrastructure, is backing North Harbour’s first two grid-scale battery projects in New South Wales (NSW), together worth about $800 million.
The projects are the 400 MW / 800 MWh Upper Hunter Battery Energy Storage System being developed near Aberdeen in the Hunter Valley, and the same-sized Wallabadah project planned for south of Tamworth.
Each project is expected to need about $180 million in equity, with the rest financed through debt. Financial close is targeted from mid-2026, with super funds expected to participate at that stage.
The proposed Upper Hunter and Wallabadah battery projects form part of North Harbour’s energy storage portfolio that also includes the 80 MW / 160 MWh Temora battery project planned for the state’s Riverina region.
North Harbour is also developing pumped hydro, and watching flow battery technologies but says lithium-ion remains its focus for now as long-duration technology scales.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.