At a glance
Amazon has contracted a 50MW, 200MWh battery at Bairnsdale in Victoria's East Gippsland, its first standalone storage deal in Australia.
The 2 September agreement is a toll, so Amazon pays a fixed fee and decides when the battery charges and discharges.
Anza Power owns the project, launched in January with US$300 million from I Squared Capital, and says the agreement supports the system's development.
Eight of the nine renewable contracts Amazon signed in April carried batteries, and the company counts 10 storage projects at 368MW once built.
Ministers take up rule changes this month setting what a data centre must buy to offset its demand, and the tests in front of them count generation.
AWS is spending A$20 billion on Australian data centres to 2029, and Amazon has put A$2.8 billion since 2020 into the wind and solar projects that run them. All 20 of those projects sell electricity. Keeping a data centre supplied through the evening peak takes power that can be dispatched after dark, and on 2 September Amazon contracted for it: for a fixed fee, the company now decides when a 50MW, 200MWh battery at Bairnsdale in East Gippsland charges and discharges.
Anza Power structured the deal as a tolling agreement, which both companies call the first of its kind in Australia for a business outside the energy industry.
Energy ministers agreed in July to make data centres fund new renewable generation in the state that hosts them. The Australian Energy Market Commission asked for a second thing alongside it, that data centres back their demand with new firm capacity, meaning power that can be called on when the wind drops and the sun sets. Amazon contracted 200MWh of that on 2 September, with no rule yet requiring it.
Amazon pays a fixed fee and sets the charge and discharge schedule
A power purchase agreement makes a hyperscaler the customer of a generator: the project sells its output, and the buyer takes the electricity and the renewable certificates that come with it. A toll transfers the operating decision. Amazon pays Anza a fixed, recurring fee, and holds the commercial call on when the Bairnsdale system draws power from the grid and when it releases it. Anza keeps the asset and a revenue line that holds whatever the spot price does.
At 50MW and 200MWh the battery runs four hours at full output, the duration built for the evening peak, and it charges and discharges into the National Electricity Market. Amazon's own account calls Bairnsdale its first standalone battery storage agreement anywhere; I Squared Capital's release puts it as the first in Asia Pacific.
Amazon now buys Australian power three ways, and the toll is the newest.
Contract | What Amazon buys | Australian example |
|---|---|---|
Solar power purchase agreement | The electricity a named project generates | Anza's Stanbridge and Laceby farms, April 2026 |
Co-located battery agreement | The output of a battery attached to that project | European Energy's Mokoan battery, financial close July |
Standalone tolling agreement | The right to decide when a grid-connected battery charges and discharges | Anza's Bairnsdale system, 2 September |
Source: Amazon, Anza Power and European Energy announcements, April to September 2026.
Anza Power launched in January with US$300 million and a 1GW pipeline
I Squared Capital established Anza Power on 15 January with a US$300 million commitment from its ISQ Growth Markets Infrastructure Fund II, to build solar and storage across Australia and New Zealand. Anza puts its portfolio at more than a gigawatt, and its published project list includes a 280MW/1,120MWh battery at Sheffield in north west Tasmania and a 200MW/800MWh battery at Albury. Anza has signed seven energy agreements in under eight months under chief executive Carlo Frigerio, and five of the nine contracts Amazon signed in April were over Anza projects.
Anza's project page for Bairnsdale carries the 50MW and 200MWh ratings and the East Gippsland location, and the 2 September announcement says the agreement will support the system's development. No construction start, commissioning date or grid connection point has been published, and neither company has said whether the toll was signed before Bairnsdale reached its final investment decision, the point at which a developer commits the capital to build.
A toll gives a merchant battery, one selling into the spot market with no contract behind it, a fixed income regardless of what it earns trading, which is the revenue certainty a lender wants before it funds construction. The additionality rule ministers are drafting turns on the same test for wind and solar: a contract signed before the investment decision builds a project, and a contract signed after it buys from one already going ahead.
Seven of Amazon's ten Australian battery projects sit in Victoria
Amazon's Australian portfolio has moved toward storage over eighteen months. The nine power purchase agreements signed in April added 430MW and carried batteries on eight of them, taking contracted Australian capacity to about 990MW once every project runs. By its own September account the company holds 10 battery projects totalling 368MW when complete, seven of them in Victoria. BloombergNEF ranked Amazon the largest corporate purchaser of carbon-free energy in Australia in 2025.
Two of those reached financial close in July with European Energy, whose Australian managing director Catriona McLeod said that given a choice between a data centre buyer and the federal underwriting scheme she would take the data centre every time. AWS runs cloud regions in Sydney and Melbourne, drawing on the same grid as the rest of the data centres in Australia, and its western Melbourne facility will cool with recycled water in a Victorian first.
Amazon describes the battery's job as grid support, storing midday surplus and releasing it in the evening to smooth price spikes, and publishes the deal on the page it uses to explain how it powers its Australian data centres. No named AWS site is attached to it. Firmus took the other approach in July, contracting a 200MW battery at Koolunga in South Australia's Mid North, sized against the load its own planned AI factories will draw and contracted for twelve years.
Australia's grid turned away more than 7TWh of wind and solar in 2025
Amazon puts Australia's surplus wind and solar generation at 7.2 terawatt hours in 2025 and publishes no source for the number. Rystad Energy analyst David Dixon puts utility-scale solar and wind curtailment in the National Electricity Market above 7TWh in 2025, more than 60 per cent above 2024 and more than triple the 2022 figure, with solar accounting for 52 per cent of the total and 38 per cent of South Australia's utility-scale solar output turned down. Curtailment is generation the market instructs a farm to stop producing, either because prices have gone negative or because the network cannot carry it.
Dixon counts 5.3GW of utility-scale batteries operating, 2.3GW commissioning and 6.9GW expected within eighteen months, and points to Western Australia, where negative-price hours fell about 75 per cent once operating battery capacity passed solar capacity. A 200MWh system is a small contribution against 6.9GW. A cloud provider is now paying the fee that lets a lender underwrite a battery, a role Australian tolls have given to energy companies until now.
Google reached the same problem differently at Mulwala in southern New South Wales, where AirTrunk procures 25MW of solar output and time-matched certificates under a 2023 power purchase agreement and applies them against Google's Australian data centre load. A 20MW/40MWh battery is planned beside that solar farm, and AirTrunk's contract ties its output to a named customer.
The Australian Energy Market Commission asked for firm capacity too
Energy ministers agreed on 28 July to progress rules making data centres fund new renewable generation in their host state, and asked for National Electricity Rule change requests by September. The commission's advice to ministers set four requirements: surrender certificates from new and additional generators, back demand with new firm capacity, register as market participants, and take connection terms that reward shifting load. National Cabinet met on 26 August and left the energy standards to legislation in early 2027, leaving the September rule changes as the live instrument.
Ministers and industry have argued almost entirely about the first requirement since July, because a certificate test and a contract-date test buy different things and only one of them puts a new wind or solar farm on the ground. A battery meets the second requirement. It supplies capacity at the evening peak, and because it generates nothing it issues no certificates.
The Clean Energy Council's Clean Energy Australia 2026 report counts 4.3GW of large-scale batteries worth A$4.8 billion committed in 2025, and 2.3GW of large-scale wind and solar reaching financial close, down 46 per cent on the year before. Chief executive Jackie Trad called financial commitments for large-scale wind and solar "at a decade low". The obligation ministers take up this month attaches to that class of project.
What to watch
Whether the rule change requests ministers take up this month define firm capacity, or leave it to detailed design alongside the additionality test.
Anza's construction start and commissioning date for Bairnsdale, and whether the toll is disclosed as preceding financial close.
Whether a tolling contract over an asset the data centre buyer does not own is treated as that buyer's firm capacity when the rule is written.
Whether Microsoft, Google or NEXTDC follow with a standalone storage toll, which would make tolling the second contract type Australian data centre buyers use.
Anza's Albury and Sheffield systems, at 800MWh and 1,120MWh, which would be materially larger tolls on the Bairnsdale template.