NSW Firming Projects Enter Service With 2.79 GWh of Batteries
Four NSW firming projects are now operational, combining three batteries with 2,790 MWh of storage and a 95 MW statewide virtual power plant.
Published · 3 min read
NSW firming projects backed through the state’s second Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap tender are all operational after the 500 MW/1,000 MWh Liddell battery reached full commercial service in September 2026.
The completed portfolio includes three batteries with a combined 980 MW/2,790 MWh of nameplate capacity and a 95 MW statewide virtual power plant. The New South Wales government describes the group as roughly 1 GW/3 GWh of firming capacity and says the projects represent more than A$1.8 billion of investment.
The virtual power plant is demand response, not a fourth battery. Its 95 MW rating measures the load that participating customers can adjust, while the batteries’ megawatt-hour ratings measure stored energy. The figures should not be added as though they describe the same physical quantity.
NSW firming projects move from awards to operation
The NSW government announcement identifies four operating resources:
- Liddell BESS: AGL Energy’s 500 MW/1,000 MWh battery at the former Liddell coal-fired power station site in Muswellbrook.
- Orana BESS: Akaysha Energy’s 415 MW/1,660 MWh battery at Montefiores in the Central-West Orana region.
- Smithfield BESS: Iberdrola Australia’s 65 MW/130 MWh battery in western Sydney.
- Statewide virtual power plant: Enel X’s 95 MW demand-response portfolio with a minimum two-hour dispatch duration.
Liddell is the newest commercial milestone. AGL said the battery reached full commercial operations during September and is storing and dispatching electricity. The project is the first major development at the former Liddell station under AGL’s planned Hunter Energy Hub.
The government also said Smithfield was completed ahead of schedule and that Enel X customers had already responded during a December 2025 heat event and other peak-demand periods. Public statements confirm operating status, but they do not provide a common dataset for round-trip efficiency, availability, cycling, market revenue or measured reliability performance across all four resources.
Battery storage and flexible demand provide different services
The three batteries can charge when electricity is available and discharge during periods of higher demand, price or system need. Based on their nameplate ratings, Liddell and Smithfield are two-hour batteries, while Orana is rated at four hours. Those calculations describe maximum nameplate duration and do not establish usable energy after operating reserves, auxiliary loads, degradation and dispatch constraints.
Enel X’s resource instead coordinates participating customer loads. A virtual power plant can aggregate flexible demand or distributed assets so they respond as a portfolio, but it does not necessarily store electricity. Microgrid Media’s guide to virtual power plants and microgrids explains why aggregation should not be confused with an islandable local power system.
Long-term agreements supported the firming portfolio
The projects were selected in 2023 through Long-Term Energy Service Agreements under the NSW Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap. The contracts are designed to provide revenue certainty while requiring resources to be available when the system faces tight supply conditions.
pv magazine Australia reported that the agreements include options for top-up payments and require the projects to be available for at least 90% of the year and to respond to critical Lack of Reserve events. The publication calculated the portfolio at about 8% of New South Wales’ fiscal 2026 summer peak demand.
The operating milestone follows the recent completion of the smaller Yiray Clean Energy Park near Orange. Yiray combines community solar and storage, while the tender portfolio is built around utility-scale batteries and aggregated demand response. The projects serve different purposes and should not be treated as one development.
Operations data will determine the reliability value
Commercial operation confirms that the assets have moved beyond award and construction stages. It does not by itself show how often each battery will cycle, how the virtual power plant will perform during sustained peaks or whether the portfolio will reduce wholesale prices by a measurable amount.
The most useful next disclosures will be availability, dispatch during reserve events, usable energy, response time, network constraints, market revenue and performance against the agreement requirements. Those results will show whether the NSW firming projects deliver the reliability contribution anticipated when the contracts were awarded.
