NSW's Waratah Super Battery hit final commercial ops - 850 MW on an old coal site, built to catch grid shocks in milliseconds
Akaysha Energy reached final commercial operations at the Waratah Super Battery in New South Wales on 28 September 2026: 850 MW / 1,680 MWh on the former Munmorah coal-fired power station site. NSW Government commissioned it; Akaysha builds, owns and operates; Transgrid's System Integrity Protection Scheme (SIPS) is the fast grid-protection layer it plugs into.
This one is already running, not another pipeline slide.
Akaysha Energy said on 28 September 2026 that the Waratah Super Battery reached final commercial operations. The box is sized at 850 megawatts of power and 1,680 megawatt-hours of stored energy. Simple arithmetic: at full output that is about two hours. It sits on the former Munmorah coal plant site. The NSW Government commissioned the project; Akaysha builds, owns and operates it.
Workplace meaning first: this is not a rooftop rebate and not a factory invoice number. It is grid insurance. When a transmission fault, a weather hit, or a sudden swing in power flow hits New South Wales, Transgrid's System Integrity Protection Scheme - SIPS - is the automatic network protection that watches critical lines and tells assets to inject or absorb power fast enough to stop a local problem becoming a wider trip. Waratah is the battery half of that project; Transgrid delivered the SIPS control system. Hitachi Energy's later project feature (29 September 2026) says that kind of response is measured in milliseconds, and that Hitachi supplied 288 power conversion system units and two power plant controllers so the battery can take part.
Analogy: a shock absorber on a delivery truck. The road still has bumps. The absorber takes the jolt in a blink so one pothole does not spill the freight. SIPS is that absorber for NSW transmission lines. Waratah is the mass it pushes against.
Akaysha's page names the private-investment scale: more than $1 billion, about 1,000 people across design and construction, and about 170 workers on site at peak. Delivery partners thanked on that page include EnergyCo, the NSW Government, Transgrid, Consolidated Power Projects Australia, Hitachi Energy, Wilson Transformer Company, REPT Battero and EVE Energy.
Hitachi's feature adds two more published points worth keeping straight. First, the same conversion and control kit that qualifies Waratah for SIPS also supports broader grid services, ancillary markets, and energy trading - so the box is not only a reserve sitting idle until an emergency. Second, during a severe heatwave in November 2024 the battery was already called on to help keep NSW electricity reliable - an early stress test before this final commercial-ops mark.
We will not invent a cents-per-kilowatt-hour cut for a warehouse in Newcastle or western Sydney from this project. Your site rides the grid Waratah is meant to steady. Your quote is still a separate conversation.
Good: Named size (850 MW / 1,680 MWh), named site (ex-Munmorah), named final commercial operations date (28 Sep 2026), named SIPS role, named owners and kit partners. Live asset, not a planning notice.
Bad: About two hours at full power - a shorter duration than an eight-hour grid battery. This is a grid-scale reliability story. No published workplace voucher or site payback on these pages.
Ugly: Hitachi's page is a vendor feature as well as a project report - treat partner quotes as partner quotes. Passing SIPS qualification is not a promise that every future fault will be invisible on your meter. No invented retail tariff maths.
Source: Akaysha Energy, 28 Sep 2026 - Waratah Super Battery reaches final commercial operations. Also Hitachi Energy, 29 Sep 2026 - Waratah Super Battery enters operation as a critical grid asset. Named size, site, partners, SIPS role, and the November 2024 heatwave call as published. No workplace voucher or site payback on these pages.