At a glance
Amazon holds power contracts over both Victorian projects European Energy took to financial close in July.
Winton North closed on 2 July with 130MW of solar and a 100MW battery, and no government underwriting behind it.
Mokoan closed on 20 July, refinancing a solar farm the government already underwrites and funding a 40MW battery contracted to AWS.
European Energy Australia's managing director Catriona McLeod calls the government scheme well run, and still prefers a data centre buyer "every day".
Energy ministers agreed on 28 July to progress rules making data centres fund new renewables in their host state, with Queensland and the Northern Territory opposed.
Winton North and Mokoan close financing on Amazon contracts
Two Victorian solar and battery projects reached financial close in July, and Amazon has contracted to buy the output of both. Amazon buys that power to run AWS, and its Australian data centres in Sydney and Melbourne are the load these contracts are written against. The company says it is focused here on renewables firmed with batteries. The developer is European Energy Australia, the local arm of the Danish renewable developer, and its managing director Catriona McLeod told an industry summit that given the choice between a data centre buyer and the federal government's underwriting scheme she would take the data centre every time.
Banks will not fund a wind or solar farm against electricity sold at the daily price. Someone has to promise in writing to pay for the output for years at a known price. That promise comes either from the government, through the Capacity Investment Scheme, which guarantees a revenue floor and is won by tender, or from a corporate customer signing a long contract, which is what Amazon has done at both sites. The project then reaches financial close, when lenders commit and construction money can be drawn.
McLeod has used both routes. One of the two July projects carries government support and the other does not.
Winton North closed on 2 July carrying 130MW of solar and a 100MW battery at 220MWh, a little over two hours at full output. Amazon holds a power purchase agreement over the solar generation and a second agreement over the battery. Commerzbank AG's Singapore branch and Societe Generale provided the debt, and construction had already started when the financing was announced. RenewEconomy reports that Winton North holds no Capacity Investment Scheme agreement.
AWS head of infrastructure and energy policy for Australia and New Zealand Matt O'Rourke said co-locating storage with solar means "clean energy can be stored and dispatched when the grid needs it most, helping strengthen reliability as Australia transitions to renewables."
Mokoan closed on 20 July, when Deutsche Bank provided A$110 million of non-recourse financing. That package refinanced the debt on an operating asset and funded new construction at the same site. The solar farm runs 58MWp about 25 kilometres south west of Wangaratta in northern Victoria, has been generating since June 2025, and was selected under the first Capacity Investment Scheme tender. The new build is a 40MW battery at 80MWh, and AWS holds the power purchase agreement over it. McLeod called it the company's second battery to reach the milestone and its first to come online.
McLeod calls the scheme well run and still prefers the data centre
McLeod made the comparison on the record at the Clean Energy Council's Australian Clean Energy Summit at ICC Sydney on 28 and 29 July. The offtaker she names is the party that signs up to buy a project's output, and lenders assess that contract before they commit.
"There are some really tough negotiators in the data centre offtake space," she said, as reported by RenewEconomy on 3 August. "So I wouldn't say it's an easy process, but if I was choosing between offtake with data centre load or the Capacity Investment Scheme, for example, I would choose the data centre offtaker every day."
McLeod said the company has brought six projects to financial close over the past two to three years, all of them supported by offtake from technology companies.
The Capacity Investment Scheme underwrites revenue directly rather than through a customer. The Australian government agrees a floor and a ceiling with a project for up to 15 years, covers a share of any shortfall below the floor, and takes a share of revenue above the ceiling. It was expanded in July 2025 to a target of 40GW by 2030, across 26GW of generation and 14GW of clean dispatchable capacity, and tender rounds run to 2027 for projects that can be commissioned by 2030.
Bullyard and Kayuga add 182MW of government-backed solar
European Energy won underwriting agreements for both in the seventh tender, whose results were announced in May: 97MW at Bullyard in Queensland and 85MW at Kayuga in New South Wales. Both are still to reach construction. That tender awarded 7.8GW across 19 projects against a 5GW target, from 53 bids totalling 18.6GW.
Project and location | Support | Status |
|---|---|---|
Winton North, Victoria, 130MW solar and 100MW/220MWh battery | Amazon agreements over solar and storage, no government underwriting | Financial close 2 July 2026, under construction |
Mokoan, near Wangaratta, Victoria, 58MWp solar and 40MW/80MWh battery | Capacity Investment Scheme support on the solar, AWS agreement over the battery | Financial close 20 July 2026, solar generating since June 2025 |
Bullyard, Queensland, 97MW and Kayuga, New South Wales, 85MW | Capacity Investment Scheme underwriting, seventh tender | Awarded May 2026, yet to reach construction |
Source: European Energy announcements, 2 and 20 July 2026; RenewEconomy, May and 3 August 2026; PV Tech, May 2026.
Google's 25MW power purchase agreement at Mulwala, sleeved through AirTrunk, ran the same route in 2023. The contract underwrote a 31MW solar farm in the New South Wales Riverina, and Westpac and DZ Bank closed construction debt on it in June 2025. European Energy carried that project through to grid connection after buying the rights from OX2 in September 2024. The company puts its Australian pipeline at about 10GW across projects at various stages of development.
The Clean Energy Council counts 2.3GW of new generation commitments in 2025
The Clean Energy Council says financial commitments to new wind and solar are at a decade low. Its Clean Energy Australia 2026 report records 2.3GW of new generation reaching financial close in 2025, down 46% on the year before, with onshore wind commitments down 59%. Chief executive Jackie Trad said "the number that demands attention is going in the wrong direction: financial commitments for large-scale wind and solar is at a decade low," and called removing the structural barriers to investment the sector's highest priority in 2026. Storage was the exception, at 4.3GW and 13.5GWh committed, worth A$4.8 billion and up 67% on 2024.
The nine power purchase agreements Amazon signed in April added 430MW and took its Australian portfolio to 990MW across 20 projects, on A$2.8 billion of investment since 2020. Eight of the nine carried battery storage, and the Mokoan battery was one of them. "In Australia, we're entirely focused on renewables firmed with batteries," O'Rourke said at the time, describing the aim as providing revenue certainty to get projects over the line. The company's announcement cites BloombergNEF data ranking Amazon the largest corporate purchaser of carbon-free energy in Australia for 2025.
Australian operators are contracting on the same principle. Firmus signed a 200MW battery in South Australia to firm its AI factories before the load arrived, and AGL has built a capital-expenditure position around a 34TWh forecast of data centre demand.
Energy ministers agreed on 28 July to progress an in-state renewables rule
Energy ministers met on 28 July, the first day of the summit, and agreed to progress rules requiring data centres to offset their demand with additional renewable generation built in the jurisdiction hosting them. Queensland and the Northern Territory opposed, a jurisdiction can exempt itself from the geography, and the legislation is due in early 2027. The communiqué says compliance would run through a guarantee of origin scheme, which issues a certificate for each megawatt hour and records where and in which hour it was generated.
What makes a project additional is undefined, and the rule changes that settle it go to ministers in September. One open question is who signs the contract for new generation, the operator of the building or the technology company whose computing runs inside it. Another is whether the obligation is measured against the electricity a site actually draws or against its nameplate capacity.
Amazon contracts directly with the developer in both Victorian projects, and the generation sits in the same state as its western Melbourne data centre. South Australia already applies a comparable condition through its "new energy for new demand" policy. Modelling by Baringa for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation put 2035 wholesale prices 26% higher in New South Wales and 23% higher in Victoria where new generation and storage are not matched to the load. Those prices reach households through the wholesale component of a power bill.
Alistair Parker points to UK data centres responding at short notice
VicGrid chief executive Alistair Parker told the same summit his view of data centre load has shifted over the past year. "If I'd been asked this question a year ago, I would have said the sky was falling again," he said. He pointed to UK research in which data centres respond to system demands at very short notice while still completing 99.5% of their throughput without gas turbines, and said that the more the sector is understood, "they look more and more like a really useful and flexible load, and something we can work with."
The 2025 Victorian Transmission Plan already modelled high data centre demand scenarios, and the next update is due in 2027. Parker said there is "a bit of alarmism around data centres that when we really get under the hood, we're not quite scared about." AEMO's 2026 Integrated System Plan has data centres reaching almost 10% of the market's underlying demand by 2050, four times today's share.
What to watch
The September rule changes. National Electricity Rule change requests go to energy ministers in September, and that is where "additional" acquires a definition. A commissioning date threshold is the first thing to look for, since certificates from an existing plant would otherwise satisfy a rule written to fund a new one.
The ninth tender result. The ninth Capacity Investment Scheme tender opened on 26 May seeking 5GW of generation, and no result has been announced. The seventh drew 53 bids for a 5GW target and awarded 7.8GW.
Winton North and the Mokoan battery. European Energy's announcement puts Winton North's completion in 2026, and pv magazine Australia reports the Mokoan battery commissioning in mid-2027. Both sit in north east Victoria, and Amazon holds contracts over both.